Two tourists from Mexico and Colombia are extremely lucky after spending an entire night outdoors near Norvan Falls in North Vancouver, North Shore Rescue says.
“They took a bus here. They started their hike at 1 p.m. Saturday,” said Don Jardine, a North Shore Rescue team member.
“I don’t know if they checked the weather forecast. They went out pretty well unprepared. I don’t know how they decided on that hike in these conditions.”
The area received a large overnight snowfall, somewhere around 30 cm, according to Environment Canada.
Jardine said the couple did not have headlamps and lost their only phone on the hike. To make matters worse, once the snowfall became heavy, they lost the trail and decided to try hiking down, following a creek.
“They got in the creek and got wet. Then they realized that was futile,” Jardine said.
“They did the right thing at that point, they found a tree that gave them some shelter and spent the night there.”
Lucky for the tourists, some hikers that were very well prepared heard their cries for help around 12 p.m. Sunday.
“We were heading up to Norvan Falls, we thought it would be frozen so we brought our ice climbing gear, but we were up the trail maybe thirty minutes when we heard some shouting,” said Killian Haugh.
“They sounded pretty distressed.”
The three hikers who heard the shouts for help then made their way to the tourists.
“We bushwhacked to where we heard the shouts coming from, about 500 metres off the trail,” Haugh said.
“We found them and they were pretty cold, shivering. We got them out of their wet clothes and we had brought a lot of layers, so it worked out.”
North Shore Rescue was then called and the group headed down the trail together.
“Check the weather, check the route, check supplies,” Jardine said.
“It could have turned out a whole lot worse for them if the hikers didn’t hear them.”