BOW VALLEY – Almost every day during the summer months, someone, somewhere in the Bow Valley is being rescued.
Whether it’s a broken ankle during a hike or simply becoming lost among the rocky peaks, there are three major players working hard as a team to get locals and tourists home safely – Alpine Helicopters Inc., Kananaskis Country Public Safety and Parks Canada.
Todd Cooper, the director of flight operations for the intermediate fleet at Alpine Helicopters Inc., has been flying the machines himself for 22 years – 17 of which has been spent as a rescue pilot. Cooper said during his time in the field, he has seen a variety of situations where a person or persons is in need of some help.
“It's never the same; it’s pretty random,”he said. “We have hikers, mountain bikers, I’ve picked up people who’ve crashed a hot air balloon, I’ve picked up people that have crashed airplanes – it’s super random, you never really know what’s going to happen.”
In the month of July alone 49 calls came through. As of Aug. 24, 44 rescues had taken place so far this month, according to Cooper. In terms of what exactly occurs when a call comes in, Cooper said the crew jumps into action with a goal of being airborne within 15 minutes – even if they’re at home at the time of the page.
“It used to be the old pagers and now it’s all on our phone,”Cooper said with a laugh. “We’ll get a page and it gives you a general description of what the call is and location. Then we’ll call dispatch and give an (estimated time of arrival).”
Typically, three people are in the helicopter cabin – the rescue pilot and two safety specialists such as a Parks Canada’s mountain safety specialists or K-Country public safety specialists, or both.
For Jeremy Mackenzie, public safety specialist for K-Country, a good relationship with the crew and ability for all parties to feel confident having discussions with one another is integral to an operation.
“One of the key things that we’re doing on any mission but specifically helicopter rescue missions, we’ll be doing quite a thorough but not necessarily lengthy, quick and thorough hazard assessment from the air,” Mackenzie explains.
“The pilot has to be happy with the flight conditions and the access to the spot whether it’s just for landing or whether it’s for a swing rescue and also the rescue team has to be happy with that as well. It’s a team effort where we’ll discuss a wide variety of issues while we’re looking at the site from the air.”
Both Mackenzie and Cooper explain that the teams need to have a certain level of trust, which here in the Bow Valley, they seem to have down pat.
“The people we work directly with – it’s a very small crew and they’re all visitor safety specialist’s, full mountain guides, that are trained into the rescue stuff,” said Cooper.
“It’s a very small crew even between Banff and K-Country, we know everybody we work with. It’s quite a tight-knit community and it’s very important…there’s that trust factor there.”
In fact, K-Country crews keep equipment at Alpine Helicopters Inc. facilities so if there’s a rescue, they can go directly to the same place and take off together. In other cases, the pilot would stop to pick up the necessary parties.
During a rescue, the pilot will find the safest access point to the person or persons needing assistance. The pilot will land if possible, but if not, they’ll execute what is called a long line rescue, otherwise referred to as a swing rescue. A long line rescue uses a 100 ft rope that hangs from underneath the helicopter.
“There’s two releasable hooks underneath the helicopter, it hooks up to that – it’s a 100 ft rope that we use to physically sling the people [safety specialists] into the scene with,”explains Cooper.
Typically while a rescue is occurring, a staging area with paramedics who can assess the injury on scene is available.
“In a lot of cases we’ll fly out with a couple people and have some ground staff available too at the staging area,”said Mackenzie.
In terms of what you can do to help with a more successful rescue, both Cooper and Mackenzie say to make yourself more visible.
“Anything you can do to make yourself more visible,” said Cooper. “A lot of the times we go to rescue people and they’re wearing black or just colours that you would never really see or are tougher to see, so have something with you that makes you visible to us… If you have your [cellphone] light on we will see your phone pretty quickly.”
As well, if you don’t have to split up, don’t and know the signs to indicate you do or don’t need help – using your arms in the air to form a Y shape indicates you do need help while one arm pointed down and one arm pointed up indicates you do not. Mackenzie also adds that preparing as thoroughly as you can for your outdoor adventures is encouraged.
“Taking care of yourself as best you can so that comes a bit with being prepared to go out,” said Mackenzie. “Even on a summer day you’re going to want to have a warm layer and possibly a rain layer, things like a head lamp and stuff to stay warm and hydrated, a little bit of food, just because it might take us a bit of time to get there dependent on the weather or other circumstances.”
While typically crews respond fairly quickly to a call, it could take a little while to get there if the weather isn’t favourable or access to the scene is somehow hindered or difficult.
“Folks should understand that and know that they might have to take care of themselves for a little bit,” said Mackenzie.
“It seems like a real common trend for us is that people are poorly prepared and there’s a lot of rescues we do that could be avoided if people were better prepared.”
Things like proper footwear, extra clothes, having enough water and, possibly most important, researching the terrain you plan to explore are all important when hitting the landscapes surrounding us.
“One of the big things that seems to be more common these days is people are going out without doing any research,” said Mackenzie, adding it used to be common for those exploring the back country to do adequate research whether it be through a guide book or a website.
“People are relying sometimes only on what they can download on their phone and often the information isn’t that accurate or helpful and complete and so we’re getting a lot of that where people don’t know where they are or how to get back to the trail or how to get off the mountain – all these things that would be very easy to find if they did the appropriate preparations.”
Kananaskis Country Public Safety specialists are on call 24/7 all year round. Rescue pilots at Alpine Helicopters Inc. rotate weekly and are on call from sunrise to sunset as the helicopter isn’t able to fly at night. The Outlook contacted Parks Canada to speak with a mountain safety specialist for this piece but was unsuccessful.
For more information on Alpine Helicopters Inc. or Kananaskis Country Public Safety, you can visit their Facebook pages.
