They’ve plucked people from Mount Edith Cavell, wheeled people off the bench and rescued others from Morro Slabs. All in all, it’s been a pretty good year for rescues in Jasper National Park (JNP).

Our latest survivor, a 46-year-old Fort Saskatchewan man decided to go for a hike out on the Athabasca Glacier when he found himself in more than a little bit of strife. Thankfully, for that man, he had the will to fight on and the resolve to ration his food until he was nourished enough to make the long, dangerous plight back to solid ground.

It’s puzzling how someone can wander onto a glacier – that’s filled with body-size holes easily covered over by blowing snow – disappear for nine days and then make it safely down only to wonder what happened to his car.

Little did the man know, that Jasper National Park’s public safety crew had spent seven days scaling terrain that was threatening even to them, fully trained and equipped with all the precautions being taken.

While the man hid from the blizzards and then rested up, he must have been praying for the sight of someone to help get back down, or fly him to safety.

Thankfully, our public safety crew have a wealth of rescue knowledge and the experience of the park to be able to help people like this hiker. (Well, most of the time.)

But, when they’re left with nothing but a car in a car park, no real knowledge of where you’re heading off to – not even with your family or friends – it makes for a difficult place to start.

One can only imagine how their minds begin to think when it’s absolutely blowing a blizzard and there is a missing person, only a day late but still it’s one day too many, somewhere on the glacier.

A few of the successful rescue stories have been made a lot easier by small gestures that people do to ensure their whereabouts is known.

For example, if this weeks hiker had bought a small spot device even if he fell and couldn’t activate the emergency call himself, as soon as the search commenced the exact location of his whereabouts could have been found.

So easy.

That’s how JNP public safety crew found the climbers, who were caught in an unsuspected snow storm and consequently stranded on the east ridge of Mount Edith Cavell earlier in the summer.

Especially living in the mountains, it’s easy to become blasé and comfortable with your surroundings. However, it’s the lucky lessons of individuals who, as public safety crew manager Steve Blake put it, “survived the odds”, that we should all learn.

Don’t leave it to surviving the odds, but instead take the necessary precautions to leave a trail behind you.

At least then, when you’re stuck alone in the park somewhere, there might be some trail left to enable rescuers to do their job, and rescue you.