Husband rescued after 9 days on B. C. mountain

Worldy

Investigators are trying to figure out why a Quebec couple who spent days stranded in the snowy mountains of eastern British Columbia weren't rescued sooner, despite the fact that two different helicopter pilots had spotted SOSs carved in the snow.

By the time searchers rescued Gilles Blackburn, 51, on Tuesday morning near the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort in Golden, B. C., his wife, 44-year-old Marie Josee Fortin, had died. Mr. Blackburn spent nine days in the cold.

Police have said his wife died of exposure. An autopsy will be conducted tomorrow.

Family of the couple confirmed their identities yesterday, although police had not yet released the names.

Ian Foss, manager of the volunteer-run Golden and District Search and Rescue, said the woman had died "several days earlier."

Yet Mr. Blackburn still had enough energy to get himself to where the helicopter had landed on the mountain, about 17 kilometres from the resort in an out-of-bounds area.

"He skied down to the helicopter," Mr. Foss said yesterday. "He was in pretty good shape for someone who had been out there for 10 days."

Mr. Blackburn was taken to hospital, where he was treated for frostbite. Last week, temperatures in the area dipped as low as -14 C. The RCMP said he has since left the hospital.

Mr. Foss said the couple had only two granola bars with them and their skiing equipment when they became lost in the out-of-bounds area on Feb. 15.

The couple apparently lost their way in the wilderness during a romantic Valentine's Day holiday. The couple, from the Montreal suburb of LaSalle, were dressed only for "a day of skiing at the resort" and didn't have any survival equipment with them, Mr. Foss said.

Two days after the couple became lost, an off-duty ski guide with a local heli-skiing company, Purcell Helicopter Skiing Ltd., said he saw several SOSs carved into the snow across several kilometres.

He contacted resort staff, who told them there were no outstanding ski rentals or missing-person reports. For some unknown reason, resort staff overlooked the couple's car in the underground parkade at the resort. The pilot was told to call the RCMP.

Mr. Foss said that did not happen and, for that reason, a ground search wasn't started for the missing couple.

In B. C., volunteer search-and-rescue crews do not have the authority to start their missions and must be ordered to do so by a provincial authority, like the RCMP. Golden and District Search and Rescue, one of the busiest in the province, responds to 70 to 120 calls a year.

"We don't self-dispatch. We get hundreds of calls a year. What we have to tell them directly is to contact the RCMP. If they do that, we can head on out," Mr. Foss said.

On Feb. 21, six days after the couple had been stranded, a second helicopter pilot from the same heli-skiing company reported seeing another SOS. This time the Golden RCMP detachment was contacted, investigators say. Mr. Foss said his group was contacted but, once again, could not verify that someone was missing.

"We decided that the SOS was five days old and no one still had been reported missing," he said.

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http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1329462