PENSAR crews are cleaning up their rope gear and taking stock of inventory after a long and challenging Rescue task that started around 7:30 PM Tuesday and ended early this morning around 4:00 A.M.
Penticton RCMP contacted Penticton & District Search & Rescue Tuesday evening at 7:30 PM to assist in the search of an overdue climber in the Skaha Bluffs Provincial Park. Police were advised that the 55 year old OK Falls resident had gone climbing in the Skaha Bluffs Provincial Park and was overdue by about 7 hours. Police had located the climbers truck in the Skaha Park parking lot and requested search and resuce support to locate the climber.
Ron Berlie – Search Manager advised that 15 PENSAR members were deployed into the area with teams sent into the park from the North and South trail access points. At 9:30 the climber was located hanging from their harness 5 meters from the top of a cliff climbing feature called “ Screeching Walls”. It was apparent that the climber had suffered a fall sometime in the day and due to injuries was unable to extract themselves, but fortunately was still attached to the cliff face and in their climbing harness. Berlie added “now that we had found the subject we were faced with the most difficult part of our operation, how to rescue the subject from cliff face and bring them out of the park. Berlie acknowledges that with darkness upon, difficult access in dangerous canyon terrain and not knowing the severity of the climbers injuries added to the urgency and complexity of the rescue. With no option of a nighttime air evacation, Berlie and other SAR personnel carried in rope gear, supplies and converged on top of the cliff face, where a rope rescue was used to bring the subject to the top of the canyon where they were then assessed by Team medical personnel and packaged into a stretcher. For the next 5 & 1/2 hours a dozen rescuers made the slow methodical descent and weaved their way through canyon trails using a number of rope systems to bring the subject out of the park and hand the climber over to BCEHS staff.
Berlie concluded “ our Rope team and GSAR members worked methodically, with purpose and completed the task in a safe manner. We got the job done, Team members were motivated and happy to have completed the rescue successfully. It’s what they train for and we put all of our assets to use in challenging terrain and it all paid off.