Osoyoos firefighters rescue two stranded hikers

Members with the Osoyoos Fire Department rescued two stranded hikers stuck on a mountain west of Osoyoos on Saturday afternoon.

Osoyoos fire chief Ryan McCaskill said it received a call around 1:00 p.m. that two male hikers needed assistance after climbing steep terrain behind the Osoyoos Golf Course trying to access the old quarry mines.

“Very steep terrain. They obviously crawled up on their hands and knees up the side of the mountain, like a bear crawl, they were scaling going up,” he said on Sunday.

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After climbing about halfway up the mountain, the hikers looked down and were gripped by fear, clinging to a tree and refusing to move, according to McCaskill.

“Fear overwhelmed them, they didn’t realize just how steep they were,” he said.

The Oliver and Osoyoos Search and Rescue team along with Penticton and District Search and Rescue were called in to perform a rope rescue due to the high angle of the slope.

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However, search and rescue crews were more than one hour away from the scene, so the fire department came up with another plan to coax the two men off of the mountain.

“We sent two members up and got within about 20 feet of them and we just talked to them and encouraging them to stay flat and slide back down,” McCaskill said.

The stranded hikers overcame their fears and with the support and encouragement of firefighters, they slowly slid their way back down the hillside.

Both men, who McCaskill described as French-Canadian, were assessed by BC Ambulance but were not transported to hospital. They did not sustain any serious injuries.

McCaskill said members have responded to a handful of rescue calls to the same mountain west of Osoyoos, with the last two requiring rope rescues.

“Stick with the paths, stick with your skill level. If you’re a mountain climber or an avid hiker then fair enough, but hike within your limits,” he said.