RCMP searchers returned to Upper Kananaskis Lake on Thursday to resume the search for a man and a woman, both in their 30s, who went missing after the canoe they were in capsized on Wednesday.
Bystanders in the area were able to use boats and paddleboards to pull two other people, identified as a 30-year-old man and a 34-year-old woman, from the water alive.
Upper Kananaskis Lake is a popular recreation area for boaters, fishers and hikers. It is about a two-hour drive west of Calgary.RCMP in Cochrane,Alta. said they were called to the lake, about two hours west of Calgary, around 4 p.m. Wednesday.
Cpl. Troy Savinkoff said the search for the two missing people was called off late Wednesday when the winds on the lake picked up, making it unsafe to continue.
The search resumed Thursday morning with the help of a dive team.
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“So what the dive team will do is they will go up and down the lake with sonar, and they’re going to run a grid pattern through the lake, looking for abnormalities within the water, searching for our missing people,” explained Savinkoff.
“Once they’ve done that sonar, they’ll look for any abnormalities that may be of interest and they’ll go back to those locations through GPS location. They’ll put a submersible in and if they are successful in locating somebody then they’ll put divers in to recover our missing people.”
An RCMP boat, canine unit, aircraft and members of Kananaskis Search and Rescue have also been helping with what Savinkoff described as “more of a recovery operation than a search at this point.”
Signs prominently displayed along the shoreline of the lake, which is a popular recreation for people from Calgary and the Bow Valley, warn of the danger of cold water and suddenly high winds and urge people to wear a life jacket while on the lake.
“So in this particular case, four people in this canoe on this glacier-fed lake. Unfortunately none of them are believed to have been wearing a life jacket. The canoe capsized. There were nearby boaters and other people enjoying the lake. Boats went out there as well as paddle boarders in order to conduct a rescue of the individuals that were in the water. They were successful in recovering two people, but unfortunately a male and a female have not been located and the canoe has not been located yet,” said Savinkoff.
This is the second water rescue effort in Kananaskis Country in recent weeks.
On Aug. 16, a 60-year-old man and a 30-year-old man drowned when their canoe capsized on Barrier Lake, just south of the intersection of Highway 1 and Highway 40.
Savinkoff said in both tragedies, the people involved were tourists from another country.
“They’re both glacier-fed, very cold waterways, and in both cases they’re tourists that were enjoying our mountain lakes out there — tourists from another country. We might release the country where they’re from later. We’re just doing some work with the next of kin”
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