A busy season summer continues for members of Comox Valley Ground Search and Rescue.
The team was paged at 1:45 Sunday morning to help three hikers on Mount Albert Edward.
One of the hikers hurt his leg on the return down the mountain.
A pair of search and rescue members hiked two-and-a-half hours in the dark, and met the trio near the Ranger’s Cabin at the Circlet Lake junction.
One of the SAR managers, Bronwen Beedle, said the members and hikers found shelter in the cabin.
“We have a key to it so they took them into the Ranger cabin to warm them up, and then wait until first light,” Beedle said.
At first light, the weather wasn’t looking promising for a helicopter evacuation.
That’s when more search and rescue members headed up to Raven’s Lodge to prepare for a potentially long and arduous stretcher carry.
But Beedle said a small break in the weather allowed Campbell River’s Grizzly Helicopters a small window to extract the hikers and SAR members.
“There was just enough of a clearing for them to pop in, drop down, and pick everybody up and get them out,” she said.
Beedle noted that it all worked out in the end.
“When we have a success story like this, it’s always worth it,” she said. “Everytime you can go and search and rescue, and you have a positive outcome, it’s all worthwhile.”
For the SAR team, this capped a busy week that included:
- a mutual aid hoist task with Campbell River for an injured camper in the Della Falls area;
- a search for a missing person in the Millard Park area; and
- a search for a missing elderly person who walked away from home.
