It’s been a busy summer for Jasper National Park visitor safety specialists. In the last two weeks alone, the team has responded to a plane crash just outside the park boundary, stranded hikers on the backside of Sulphur Mountain and a missing 12-year-old girl, also on Sulphur Mountain.
The float plane crash, which resulted in the death of the 62-year-old pilot—the plane’s only occupant—took place, July 26, in British Columbia’s Hamber Park, just a kilometre outside Jasper National Park.
The plane was travelling from Edmonton to Vernon, with a stop in between at Fortress Lake. It was about 14 kilometres from the lake that the plane crashed on Alnus Creek.
The cause of the crash will be released when the Transport Canada investigation is complete.
“Initially when we were notified by the Edmonton RCMP, the position that was given was for within Jasper National Park, so we responded anticipating the plane being within the park, but as it turned out it was just outside the park. It was just over a kilometre to the park boundary,” said Rupert Wedgwood, public safety specialist for JNP.
Jasper’s safety specialists, who were in a fire patrol helicopter, were the first to arrive. They found the pilot already dead on the scene. The incident then became the responsibility of the RCMP and the provincial coroner’s office.
On their way back to the park, the team received a second call, this time for two hikers—a 36-year-old Edmonton man and a 26-year-old Ontario woman—stranded on Sulphur Mountain. The pair had hiked the Sulphur Skyline and then decided to take a different route back, opting for the backside of the mountain.
“Essentially they were coming off the backside down towards the Fiddle River and there’s a series of cliffs there that separate the ridge from the valley bottom and trail, and they got stuck in the cliffs and fortunately decided not to climb down any further than they already had done and they had scared themselves enough that they didn’t want to try and climb back up again, so they started calling for help.”
Their calls were heard by a member of the public who then informed a staff member at the Miette Hot Springs. Wedgwood and his team were called at 6:30 p.m., just five minutes after they left the site of the plane crash, and around 7:30 p.m. they were on the scene looking for the hikers.
“One of the hot spring staff was very helpful,” said Wedgwood. “He went up to investigate where the calls were coming from and he was able to get right below the crack in the cliff, where the climbers were stuck about 100 feet above him, so when we came in with a helicopter, his bright red shirt was the perfect marker.”
Otherwise the pair would have been difficult to spot, as the day light was diminishing and the sky was dark from an incoming lightning storm.
Once on the scene, Wedgwood decided it would be best to climb up to the hikers, rather than down.
“We didn’t want to go in from the top and then work our way down to the hikers because there was so much loose rock at the top of the feature so us trying to get down that feature would have created rock fall.
“So we thought the safest way to approach it was for me to be slung into a bench between two cliff bands below the scramblers and then climb up to them and put them down.”
Once he reached them, Wedgwood put the two hikers into harnesses and lowered them down one at time.
“It went like clockwork, which was really just a testament to the fact that we could draw on all the resources that we could—getting early notification and support from the hot springs staff and having the support of the fire program to use their helicopter allowed us to get the hikers off really smoothly.”
And not a moment too late. By the time the hikers were safely on the ground it was dusk and the lightning storm had rolled in, forcing the chopper to land at the airfield instead of the landing pad in Jasper.
Five days later on July 31, the visitor safety team was back at Sulphur Mountain, searching for a missing child.
The 12-year-old girl from Edson was on a group hike with 16 other youth, as well as four adults. During the descent from the top of the mountain, she was separated from her group. But the group didn’t know she was missing until she wasn’t accounted for at the end of the trail. That was at about 3 p.m.
The group then realized the last time she had been seen was around 1:30 p.m. near the top of the mountain.
“As they were descending, the group was spread out. There was a supervising adult at the front, at the back and a couple in between and likely as a result of them being as spread out as they were, she had an opportunity to wander off,” said Wedgwood.
Parks was notified that she was missing at 3:20 p.m.
The search then went on for three and a half hours, with more than 20 Parks Canada employees, ranging from the trail crew to the fire crew, on the ground searching.
“We had about 25 people involved in the search,” said Max Darrah, visitor safety technician. “And the majority of those people were involved in the first hour because this was considered a high urgency response.”
Quickly getting staff onto the mountain was a helicopter that was already in the park patrolling for fires.
The girl’s pack and shoes were found first. They were more than two kilometres off the Sulphur Skyline trail. She had taken them off after getting her feet wet crossing the Fiddle River.
“It turns out she crossed the river four times,” said Darrah. “In our initial profiling, we figured she wouldn’t cross water, so that was one of the things that surprised us. That’s why that area got covered later in the search.”
The girl was found a kilometre from her pack around 7:30 p.m. and was then piggybacked to a helicopter.
“She was a tough little girl,” said Darrah. “Her feet were cut and bruised, but her spirits were high.”
In light of the two incidents on Sulphur Mountain, Parks is reminding adventurers and backcountry users to make good decisions while out in the wilderness.
If you’re travelling with a group, stick together. If you’re travelling with kids, make sure there are enough supervisors to keep an eye on each one.
When you’re hiking, carry a compass and a map and don’t go off trail, and if you’re planning to head out into the backcountry, fill out a safety registration form at the information centre, so someone knows where you are and when you’re expected to return.
Nicole Veerman
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