June skier airlifted off of Vancouver Island mountain amid avalanche risk

It may say June on the calendar, but that hasn’t prevented search and rescue volunteers from having to come to the assistance of a skier in trouble on Vancouver Island.

Members of Comox Valley Search and Rescue (CVSAR) assembled Saturday afternoon to assist a lone female skier who ran into difficulties on Mount Becher.

According to Paul Berry of CVSAR, the 29-year-old woman had been skiing solo and suddenly found herself in steep terrain and ran into difficulties.

“She headed off early this morning, well prepared, very experienced, but found herself in terrain with avalanches happening all around her, so at that point she decided to find a safe harbour and call for help,” he says.

Berry says that move was the correct thing to do.

“We do know that given the conditions that avalanches in some of the terrain could go right to ground today. These are spring conditions. We’ve had rain and some slightly warming temperatures and if the slopes are greater than 27 degrees, there’s a good chance that they could release,” Berry says.

The team had a location for the skier thanks to the information she was able to provide through an inReach satellite communications device she had with her and believed they would have to conduct a rope rescue to reach her.

Berry says he wasn’t surprised that despite the time of year someone was still out skiing.

“We do know that the snow pack is considerably higher than it would be normally just because of the temperatures, so there’s always people that are going to get that one last ski in before end of season,” Berry says.

He says although it was good the woman was prepared, he recommends against going into such areas alone.

“We certainly recommend that any time people head into the backcountry, they go with someone else so if anything goes wrong they have someone who can call for help, but we know that there are a lot of people who love to get that experience solo," Berry says.

The skier was reached and removed from the mountain without incident and was flown back by RCMP helicopter to where she had left her vehicle.