Nine minutes. That’s how long it took Steve Blake, Jasper National Parks manager of public safety, to win a 2009 Parks Canada Chief Executive Officer Award of excellence.

Nine minutes, at around 12,700 ft, where Blake was hanging in a sling from a helicopter near the peak of Mount Robson.

Two quick clips, a cut of rope and Blake successfully performed the highest sling rescue in the Canadian Rockies.

“(It) will stand out as a fairly intense nine minutes of my life,” he said. “But in the end, I cut a rope and clipped two caribeeners, so what’s the big deal?”

Two climbers had been stranded on Mount Robson for about 18 days  when Blake detected a brief break in the weather. His decision-making saw them both come out alive. 

“It was nice to get an award like that,” said Blake, “while the rescue element was extremely different than what most people (who won awards) were doing... My achievement took place in nine minutes.”

Although the rescue itself, where Blake was swinging from a helicopter, did not take long there was plenty of training, preparation and forward thinking that went into the effort.

“Robson is the pinnacle in the Canadian Rockies in terms of height and that’s the pinnacle of our training program in many ways,” he said. “I’ve done a few things on Mount Robson and they’ve all been big. It’s a big place and just to simulate the environment takes some wide eyes.” 

“It’s the culmination of a lot of planning and preparation,” he added.

Originally from Ontario, Blake has been in the public safety for about 12 years now, so he’s had plenty of experience – including a previous Mount Robson rescue just two years prior. So, even the modest mountain rescuer can admit the award was for a bit more than just this rescue.

“That rescue was a specific achievement that made it noteworthy,” he said, “but the award was for more.”

As Blake explained, the call for the rescue came in on Friday, June 6, 2008 when it was pouring rain which continued on throughout Saturday. Sunday, though, was a different story.

“There was supposed to be a break in the weather – quite an obvious cloud bank and then a clearing spell. So we decided to bring the team over to the staging area at Mount Robson.”

Sitting in the rain, Blake and his crew could slowly see the Caribous (the mountain range west of Mount Robson) with clear blue sky behind them.

“As soon as it stopped raining we called  for a helicopter,” he said. Despite the lack of rain the helicopter still had to fight cloud banks and fog until they went back out of the valley and climbed up high above the clouds.

“If you’ve ever been at the ski hill when there’s a valley cloud, it was like that, all of a sudden you’re in this glorious day with this broken cloud layer below us and we were flying around the Emperor Ridge.”

As the pilot swung the helicopter around the south side of the mountain, Blake spotted one of the climbers.

“It was just like, oh crap, there he is,” he said. 

“You go from a low lying level of anxiety because, you’re searching around Mount Robson and you might find a body, you might find nothing, to a really heightened sense of more excitement, but you’re trying to keep the fact that now you have everything to lose off your mindset,” he added.  

Suddenly dealing with the prospect of rescuing two climbers, who they could see had moved a little that day, Blake had a plan.

“So, I said, ‘I have a good idea what the plan is, they’re going to be wearing climbing gear – I’ll just go, fly in, clip them both onto lanyards and then we’ll just fly out. It’ll be very straightforward.”

That’s when his nine minute award-winning rescue commenced – beginning at around 9,500 ft and flying up to 12,700 ft.

Starting with the lower of the two men, Blake said clipping him in was “pretty straightforward, they weren’t wearing the harnesses I was expecting or anything so my whole site picture is now shot.”

Either way, the rescue continued to the second man, who was in much worse shape and struggling to follow orders, he said.

“But then what happened is the helicopter dropped about six feet. For us, that pulled the other guy right off the ledge and he did a cartwheel right over me with ice axes and crampons and stuff. He ended up smashing into my helmet.”

With all this happening in just nine minutes, Blake equates the scenario to “a tight-frame camera shot.”

“The helicopter’s creating a down-wash, an artificial windstorm. It’s really windy and blowing a blizzard. It’s all blurry, this guys falling, he’s wearing gear, the rope now goes all the way around which is bad because the helicopter and us are tied to the mountain.”

Lucky for everyone involved, Blake had been given a knife last minute by a co-worker.

“The last thing Garth said to me was, ‘Do you have a knife?’ and I said, ‘Well, I do but it’s not too handy so just hand me yours.’”

Taking the knife on the journey up Mount Robson proved to be an important facet of the rescue. “I get the knife out of my pocket and I was able to cut the rope.”

“And, we were away,” he added noting it “was super intense.”

His knowledge and experience of the area were cited at the time by Mount Robson Provincial Park Wardens as being key to the successful rescue and Blake himself admits the previous rescue meant he was a little better prepared.