Whistler Search and Rescue sees rise in response volume for third consecutive year

MOST REQUESTS FOR ASSISTANCE CAME FROM HIKERS WHO FOUND THEMSELVES IN NEED OF ASSISTANCE

BY MEGAN LALONDE

THE GROWING NUMBER of people heading into the Sea to Sky backcountry doesn’t appear to be slowing down, if Whistler Search and Rescue (WSAR) statistics are any indication.

Call volume was up for the third year in a row, as WSAR manager Brad Sills stated in the annual report he presented to members at the organization’s annual general meeting on Tuesday evening, March 21.

According to the report, WSAR received more than 115 requests for assistance between March 1, 2022 and March 1, 2023. Of those, 88 required crews to mobilize—a six-per-cent rise— while four calls were resolved by promoting self-rescue, helping lost callers download GPS apps and route-find, or offering basic medical instruction to treat symptoms like fatigue, dehydration or muscle strain. WSAR members also provided assistance to their counterparts in Pemberton on four occasions.

Staggeringly, Whistler SAR’s 88 mobilizations in 2022-23 represent a 60-per-cent jump from the 55 mobilizations volunteers recorded pre-pandemic, in the year ending on March 1, 2020. Meanwhile, Whistler SAR volunteers fielded more than 110 requests for assistance in the 12-month period ending March 1, 2022, of which 83 required team mobilizations.

Whistler SAR’s busiest month of 2022 was March, when volunteers responded to 12 requests for assistance (seven of which came in during a four-day period from March 3 to 6), followed by August, with 11 calls. Phone lines were quietist in December, when volunteers responded to just three incidents—a “notable exception,” considering the holiday period “is usually very busy,” the report pointed out—compared to four calls WSAR responded to in November.

“In general, the distribution of call volume over the months was fairly evenly distributed,” the report stated.

WHO DID WHISTLER SEARCH AND RESCUE HELP OVER THE LAST YEAR?

When it comes to rescues by activity, hikers represented the greatest proportion of search subjects, by far. They put in 33 calls for assistance, compared to 11 callouts for ski mountaineers, nine each for mountain bikers and climbers, and eight for snowmobilers. WSAR also responded to five missing persons calls, five requests for assistance from outof-bounds snowboarders, and four from out-of-bounds skiers, with calls from trail runners, commercial operators and an inland water incident making up the balance. Four calls were deemed avalanche responses.

The year marked a return to normal in terms of mountain biking-related call volume: WSAR responded to just three incidents involving mountain bikes in 2021, compared to nine in 2019.

WSAR crews visited the Garibaldi Lake area most often, on 18 occasions, followed closely by the Spearhead Range, at 17 responses.

Throughout the 12 months, WSAR helped a total of 118 people: 71 (or about 60 per cent) of whom were male and 47 female.

“Ten years ago, the call volume was more heavily weighted to young males 15-25 years of age,” the report noted.

Last year, people between 26 and 30 years old accounted for the majority of search subjects (33), followed by the 31-to-40 cohort (30), and the 41-to-50 age group (18). Fourteen search subjects were between 21 and 25 years old, while WSAR helped eight subjects between 15 and 20 years old, eight more who were between 51 and 60; six who were in their 60s, and just one child who was 15 or younger.

According to anecdotal data, tourists visiting the Sea to Sky from other countries accounted for 33 of the 118 subjects (11 Americans, six Mexicans, five British, five Chinese, three from the Czech Republic, two Japanese, and one Spaniard). Twentynine locals found themselves in need of help throughout the 12 months, while 35 subjects listed addresses from elsewhere in B.C., and 18 resided elsewhere in Canada.

HOW IS WHISTLER SEARCH AND RESCUE (AND OTHER B.C. GROUPS) FUNDED?

Each time a search-and-rescue operation makes its way into the headlines—for example, when WSAR responded to four separate callouts in a single day earlier this March—a handful of social media users will inevitably leave comments asking a variation of the same question: “Who’s paying for it?”

In B.C., that’s never the search subject, no matter how that individual or group found themselves in need of assistance. That’s the case not just in B.C., but across all Canadian provinces.

Whenever rumours arise that B.C. could consider charging search-and-rescue fees, “it causes us grief,” said Dwight Yochim, CEO of the British Columbia Search and Rescue Association (BCSARA). The group advocates on behalf of the province’s 78 different ground SAR groups and their more than 3,400 volunteers.

“What happens is someone goes missing, they don’t tell anyone, even if they have cellphone contact, they call their friends and their friends won’t call 911, they’ll try and go out and do the rescue themselves because they’re afraid of the bill they might get,” he explained. “It just delays us, and potentially means, rather than one subject, we now have several.

Or, “Imagine if there was a risk of being charged for a house fire,” Yochim analogized, “so someone tries to put out their house fire with a garden hose, and it catches the next house on fire and eventually the fire department has to show up. It’s the same thing. These are first responders.”

The sooner the call, the quicker the response, and the better the chance of a positive outcome, Yochim said. “The kind of society we have is we respond to people in need, and we don’t question it,” he explained. “That’s the position BCSARA has taken; that that’s the way we should do it to reduce risk.”

The province of British Columbia offers about $5 million in annual funding for SAR organizations across the province, and foots the bill for any costs incurred during a search and rescue operation, whether that be food, helicopter fuel, damaged equipment or other expenses. In 2018, BCSARA estimated it costs approximately $12 million to fund all 78 groups.

Crews like WSAR are registered non-profits that use donations to make up for the balance; paying for costs like training and equipment. Aside from WSAR’s annual “Wined Up” fundraising event, some donations come from grateful search subjects who found themselves on the receiving end of volunteers’ services.

“Sometimes you’ll save a subject and you’ll get a ‘thanks,’ which is really all that the volunteers ask for, but sometimes the subjects will come back in to provide a donation or help with fundraising—the support is quite nice,” Yochim said.

On a provincewide scale, search-andrescue volunteers responded to approximately 1,500 calls in 2022—down from the about 2000 responses conducted in the first year of the pandemic, said Yochim—and put in more than 440,000 volunteer hours.

“For every hour that Whistler [SAR] is out on a search, they’ve put in almost four hours in training and administrative work,” he estimated. n