Two experienced climbers were plucked to safety, Monday morning (Aug. 29) after spending a long night near the 3,554-metre summit of Mount Temple.
The man and woman, believed to be in their late 20s, had raised the alarm on their cell phone at about 10 p.m. the night before after darkness prevented them from safely descending.
Rescuers said they were unharmed and lucky the temperatures didn’t dip too low, noting it was about 7 C by the time they arrived at 7:30 a.m.
“They spent the night at about 10,500 feet. They weren’t hurt and were well prepared to spend the night,” said Brian Webster, a Parks Canada visitor safety specialist.
“They were properly clothed and had some emergency gear and some snacks. They were definitely happy to see us, but they weren’t suffering and it was relatively warm weather.”
The couple was ascending the east ridge of Mount Temple when they got off route in the Black Towers section of the climb.
Webster said they had ascended a wrong gully leading to the summit ridge and were prevented from getting onto the ridge by a large cornice.
“They were unable to continue up and at this point it was dark and they were unable to go down,” he said. “We weren’t able to do anything that night and told them we’d be there the following day.”
With precision flying, pilot Lance Cooper was able to place Webster and fellow rescuer Aaron Beardmore about 25 metres below the area of the stranded climbers, on a one-metre by one-metre ledge.
Webster said it was difficult to use the long-line sling rescue system to get directly to them because of the altitude and the nature of the terrain.
“We ended up slinging in and slinging out, but it was a bit more involved than typical in that we weren’t able to sling directly to them,” he said.
“We were able to sling in below them, able to climb up, make an anchor and bring them back to a place where the helicopter could sling them off the mountain.”
Webster said in these types of rescues, involving technical terrain and high altitude, the skill of the helicopter pilot couldn’t be underestimated.
“It’s a group effort and a large amount of it goes to the expert flying abilities of rescue pilots,” he said.
“In this case, it definitely wouldn’t have been as expedient without the pilots that we have. It’s pretty precise to get a rescuer onto that spot and elevation.”