Two foreign hikers are safe after the Alberni Valley Rescue Squad (AVRS) successfully deployed its new hoist capability.
Just before 7 p.m. on Thursday, AVRS was called to assist RCMP with a rescue in the Beaufort Range, a mountain range running from Horne Lake to Comox Lake.
The two hikers from France were finishing a three-month hiking trip and found themselves stranded on a high ledge with nowhere to go.
AVRS said volunteers connected with the hikers by phone and determined the best course of action was to use a helicopter and the AVRS hoist team to extract them.
AVRS uses its new hoist capability to rescue two stranded hikers. Photo supplied by AVRS.
Rescuers were lowered to the area and then had to rappel nearly 75 feet to get to the stranded women.
The two were then placed in a special rescue harness and picked up with the helicopter’s onboard hoist.
“From the time we received the call to when the two subjects were safely in the helicopter with rescuers was approximately two and a half hours,” Rick Johns, search manager with AVRS, said. “Without this capability, it is very likely rescuers would have been working to rescue these two well into the next day.”
In order to prevent the need for a rescue, AVRS recommends having multiple means of communication and to plan your route ahead of time.
Mackenzie Read
