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VIDEO: Ridge Meadows SAR uses helicopters to rescue pair of hikers in Golden Ears park

Ridge Meadows search team assists injured hiker

The Ridge Meadows Search and Rescue team and two helicopters were used to get a group of hikers, one injured, out of Golden Ears Park on Saturday.

Manager Rick Laing explained a pair of female hikers were about nine kilometers down the East Canyon Trail when one of them suffered a broken ankle.

Her companion determined to hike out to where she could get cellphone reception. She spoke with another group of three hikers on the path, who agreed to stay with the injured woman.

Her call was received by the RMSAR team at about 3 p.m., and with darkness looming, the team determined to extract the hikers with the assistance of Talon Helicopters.

“Daylight was fading, and the weather was rolling in,” noted Laing.

A first helicopter inserted a medical team, and also evacuated the three hikers who had stayed with the injured person.

The second helicopter was equipped with a longline, to carry the injured hiker back to the West Canyon Command. There she was treated, and taken to hospital by BC Ambulance.

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“Thank you guys for everything and for being as fast as you could be!” said the patient, Christina Murray, in a social media post. “I really didn’t want to spend the night with a badly broken ankle.”

Laing noted it was the first time the Ridge Meadows’ team did a longline rescue using its owned trained personnel. Two members of the Ridge team have been training with Coquitlam Search and Rescue in how to do longline rescue – when the subject lifted using either a stretcher or a harness, accompanied by a member of Search and Rescue.


 


ncorbett@mapleridgenews.com

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Neil Corbett

About the Author: Neil Corbett

I have been a journalist for more than 30 years, the past decade with the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows News.
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