On March 20, Lion’s Bay Search & Rescue used a helicopter-mounted RECCO detector to find an avalanche victim who was last heard from six days earlier. This was the first time this tool was successfully used in a SAR operation in Canada.
By Brent Calkin, Lions Bay Search and Rescue Team Leader
This article initially appeared in The Avalanche Journal, Volume 124, summer 2020
SUPERSTITIOUS BAD LUCK, storm force winds, a mysteriously missing man, a pandemic, an avalanche, and some powerful new avalanche search technology—this definitely wasn’t your typical search and rescue operation.
On Friday, March 13, gale force winds tore through Howe Sound, north of Vancouver. Environment Canada issued wind warnings, powerlines and trees fell, highways were blocked, and thousands lost power across B.C.
In the mountains, a subtle horror worthy of Friday the 13th emerged. Extreme winds pressed and compressed spindrift into a hard, hard slab. Baited, a trap laid in wait. The following day, it sprung.
DAY ONE, MARCH 18
The taste of 140 proof alcohol lingered as I belted into the front seat of the helicopter. The COVID-19 pandemic was getting more serious and someone had swabbed the radio headset mouthpiece with isopropanol. The strong vapor and acrid taste cut through any thought this was going to be a normal day.
It started with a confounding message from the RCMP that a snowshoer had gone missing in the Lion’s Bay area four days ago. His last communication was on Facebook: “Going to Hat Mountain, Lions Bay for a hike.”
Hat Mountain is a domed granite peak crouching over Howe Sound. To the east looms Mount Brunswick, a higher and more impressive jagged knife edge of a peak. Their summits are joined by a number of trail spurs and a col with a picturesque but steeply side-hilled section of the Howe Sound Crest Trail.
We approached Hat from the west, noting a sketchy looking snowshoe track. It climbed up the summer route, made treacherous by the 3.5 metres of snow that rounded over the top edge, and dropped into a collection of steep chutes and gullies that bottomed out in significant cliff bands 100 metres below the peak.
It looked like the hiker gained the peak without incident. Hat seemed clear, so we flew on towards Mt. Brunswick via Hat pass, skimming above the mountain firs clustered in the col. The trees opened up to reveal a jumble of broken snow piled up at the bottom of the pass. The helicopter came to rest in a hover as we looked down with dismay. We could see snowshoe tracks vanishing into the path of a size two avalanche. I radioed it in, asking Lions Bay Command for a Level 2 avalanche forecaster to assess the hazard, CARDA dogs and handlers, and a helicopter-mounted RECCO detector in case we couldn’t mount a ground search. Only 15 minutes had passed since take-off, but I felt like we’d already found our target.
I hadn’t started a day like this for a few months. Winter is generally a quiet time for our team. Lions Bay Search & Rescue (LBSAR) covers an area of tough, technical terrain just north of Vancouver centred on the 30-kilometre Howe Sound Crest Trail. In summer it’s busy with hikers and mountaineers, while winters are quieter. We’ve found those who go there in winter tend to be pretty experienced skiers and mountaineers, and also tend to successfully self-extricate when they get into trouble.
As spring approaches, a wider mix of users head out, mistaking the warmer valley weather for an easing of winter conditions in the alpine. They are often hikers on snowshoes following summer trails and navigating with cellphone GPS apps. Depending on the snow depth, there may even be trail markers to guide them. What’s missing are any indications they are walking straight into a slide path. They often don’t wear transceivers, don’t carry probes and shovels, and don’t even know they are in avalanche terrain. If there is an incident, companion rescue is unlikely, and the reality is a SAR response to a full burial is likely to be a recovery operation.
Our first challenge was finding a CAA Level 2 avalanche forecaster to act as avalanche safety officer, per Emergency Management BC requirements. Both of LBSAR’s Level 2’s were quarantined with the flu, but a number of the Level 2’s in the region had just lost their usual jobs due to COVID-19 and were available. North Shore Rescue (NSR) provided their active avalanche duty officer, Tristan Rasmussen, and a
second member to run the helicopter RECCO detector.
Our initial flight did not turn up any signs of the missing hiker in the avalanche debris. There were lots of tracks on Mt. Brunswick and we saw a skier-triggered size one slide in a nearby couloir. One of the search crew recalled a Facebook post about this. It was from the day the hiker went missing. We contacted the poster, who revealed they came upon the size two slide soon after their descent, but they hadn’t seen it while ascending that morning. They had taken pictures of our missing hiker on top of Mt. Brunswick, just a few hours before they came across the avalanche. We now had a last seen point for our hiker, and a travel path that led straight through the avalanche path.
The NSR members flew in from their base with the heli RECCO. Tristan did a slope safety assessment from the air and decided that despite some hang fire and increased risk of warming, it would be safe to put a limited number of searchers on the slope. We discussed whether the area should be assessed first with the heli RECCO, but we didn’t have enough information about its capabilities as a micro-search tool for
a subject without RECCO reflectors. We decided the standard AVSAR procedure would be followed, with a ground assessment of the site, marking ingress and egress routes, establishing a gear cache, and searching with transceivers, handheld RECCO detectors, CARDA dogs, and by spot probing.
The first day’s ground operation was brief as the west face of Mt. Brunswick shed snow as it got cooked by the sun. We worked the slope with transceivers, handheld RECCO devices, dogs, and probes for 1.5 hours without success. Plans were made to get a larger team on the slope early the next morning when it was safe to perform a probe line search, and bring the CARDA dogs back.
DAY TWO, MARCH 19
The day dawned clear and cold. Twelve searchers and two dog teams were flown in to continue the search. We brought 12 one-piece steel rods, our personal probes, and a number of G3 probes that screwed together. We started a probe line in the most likely spot of the deposition zone.
Some things quickly became evident. The deposit was much deeper than our 3.2-metre probes. It had undergone several melt-freeze cycles and was incredibly dense. The steel probes would freeze into the debris almost instantly and required two or three searchers to yank them out. Within moments, three were bent. As we looked at the debacle of the probe line with dismay and imagined having to do the entire slope in this slow and painful fashion, one of the dogs gave a strong scent indication further down in the deposition zone. The probe line shifted to that location, and the solid probes were abandoned for the G3 ones.
There were no strikes in the new location. We realized the debris was still deeper than the probes. We decided to dig down two metres so we could probe to ground. It was so incredibly difficult, someone half-jokingly suggested we use a chainsaw. It just so happened LBSAR had recently purchased an electric chainsaw that could do the job without contaminating the slope nearly as much as our stinky old two-stroke saw.
With the chainsaw, we sliced out grids in the sidewalls and floor of the pit and scooped out the blocks. We realized the debris was about six metres deep in that spot. Still, we got no strikes, but we did get a RECCO hit in the sidewall of the pit. I called command to find out how far the RECCO beam would penetrate through the snow, trying to figure out how far from the sidewall the hit might be. At this point, time was moving fast and with solar heating raising the avalanche danger, we curtailed our activities for the day. We hoped after all the probing we had done, the slope would have a bit more aeration and the dogs might have better luck early the next morning.
Back at command, Martin Colwell, our search manager, pulled me aside. He had contacted RECCO and received an answer on the RECCO penetration question—30 metres through snow for a reflector, or possibly one to two metres for incidental electronics. The RECCO Rep suggested we use the helicopter detector to do a tight grid search of the debris. I wondered whether this would be redundant due to the time we had spent with the handheld RECCO, which I had assumed offered more precision. The rep’s advice was that the heli RECCO was actually much more powerful than the handheld and would pick up much weaker signals, such as one reflected by incidental electronics like a cellphone. I stopped my questioning, eyed Martin for a moment, and backtracked on my original hesitation.
“OK, let’s do it,” I said. “But let’s make sure it doesn’t slow down the ground operation. Put the RECCO in at first light.”
DAY THREE, MARCH 20
Considerably past first light and standing in Lions Bay’s field LZ, I glanced balefully at my watch and shot eye daggers in the direction of Hat Mountain, where I could hear the helicopter working with the RECCO. It was clearly past the intended flight time for the ground crews. I contemplated calling the machine back, but instead asked with a bit of tartness their ETA for picking up the ground crews. “About 10 more minutes,” was the reply.
They kept to that time window and while coiling the RECCO line, they picked up two hits. The first was a weak one in the corner of our pit from the previous day, and the second was a considerably stronger hit in a more northerly section of the deposition zone. The first was picked up at maximum gain on the detector, while the second hit was detectable at level five, with the RECCO unit just centimetres off the
snow surface.
Our goal was to investigate the hit in the pit first. We suspected it may have been caused by having our gear cache at the edge of the deposition zone, as there was at least one RECCO tag in a jacket that was stashed there, and it was within 30 metres of the detector. We were very methodical with the handheld RECCO in that area. The operator took off all his electronic gear and put it well away from the pit. Everyone with a RECCO tag stayed well clear. The handheld unit would not confirm the heli RECCO hit, and the hit from the previous day was not repeated.
The helicopter pilot walked me to where they got the second hit. I planted a ski pole at the spot, pulled out the handheld RECCO, and conducted a micro grid pattern search. About a metre from the pole, I got the familiar “beep-beep-beep” RECCO indication. At full gain power, it indicated an area about 30 cm by 30 cm. Reducing the power by one notch, I barely got an indication in the same area. I also tried tilting the detector 90 degrees to change the signal polarity, but the signal strength did not change.
I asked the dog handler to bring the dog to that spot. After a minute or two circling the area, the dog started digging about a metre upslope of the marker. We confirmed the spot with the other handheld RECCO unit. It picked up the same signal, same spot, and same strength. We called over the probe team and indicated the exact start point.
The very first probe strike went down 30 centimetres and made a hollow thud, sounding like we’d hit a search practice strike plate. It wasn’t what I expected for a real operation. It was also surprisingly shallow after all the deep probing we had done. We started digging and quickly uncovered a pair of snowshoes; the hollow thud had been the drumhead-like membrane of the snowshoe deck. They were still attached to the pack. We demobilized most of the search team immediately and kept the five most senior members on site to extricate our subject.
AFTERMATH
The helicopter RECCO was the hero of the operation. A buried subject with no witnesses and no RECCO reflectors made for a difficult find. It took three days, with two dogs per day scouring the slope without a positive hit, terrible probe line conditions, and very weak and inconclusive handheld RECCO indications. When extracting our subject, he was in Gore-Tex head to toe, which would have restricted scent flow, and was encased in a whole-body ice lens. The dogs were at a definite disadvantage. If the heli RECCO had been used on day one, it’s likely we would have spent only a few hours looking for our subject, and the bulk would have been done from the safety of the helicopter.
What did the RECCO pick up? Our subject was well equipped with aluminum rimmed snowshoes, aluminum ski poles, an aluminum and steel ice axe, and steel crampons. For electronics, he was carrying a point and shoot camera, a cell phone, a car key fob, and a lithium power bank. According to RECCO representatives, the metal of his travel gear was unlikely to reflect the RECCO, but all the electronics were a possible source.
What if our subject had a RECCO reflector in his clothing? Either the handheld or heli RECCO could have pinpointed him very quickly. RECCO claims the heli rig could have picked him up with the helicopter flying at a height of 100 m at 100 km/h. That’s quite impressive.
The demobilization was somber as we packed our gear and watched the taillights of the coroner’s van fade into the distance. We carefully dried off the chainsaw and re-oiled the chain. We made a note to recycle the solid steel probes, and to buy a bigger stash of the G3 probes. We plugged the handheld RECCO in to recharge.
I considered what we’d learned about it and its big brother. The handheld detectors have been around for a few years and require significant practice to use effectively. They’re great when a burial includes a RECCO reflector but proved less effective when the only objects to detect consisted of the subject’s buried electronics.
POSTSCRIPT
I feel the most important information we learned, is that the heli RECCO has the potential to be an effective search tool for subjects with no reflectors and no transceiver. It would be a rare individual who would be travelling with absolutely no electronics, and the power of the large helicopter mounted RECCO unit appears to provide a good option for safe and effective searching, especially in dangerous or difficult search conditions.
If anything can give a positive spin on a tragic event such as this avalanche, it’s the successful use of this recent technology, and spreading this knowledge for future AVSAR operations.
