Archive for the 'News' category

When Going Back Makes Sense

Karl Woll | December 7, 2009 4:45 pm

I read an upsetting article today in the Globe & Mail: Snowshoes create false confidence, rescue veteran says after man slides to his death.

….And on Saturday afternoon, a young man slid to his death while snowshoeing on Goat Mountain, near Grouse Mountain in Lynn Headwaters Regional Park.

The man, who was in his 20s and was accompanied by two other men, left the Grouse Mountain area and ventured into a closed area of the park, Mr. Jones said.

At the time of the accident, the man who was killed was trying to toss the end of a fixed rope to his snowshoeing partner, who was struggling on a steep part of the slope, Mr. Jones said.

The rope is in place as part of a summer hiking route.

In throwing the rope, the man lost his balance, and slid on snowshoes that provided no traction on the treacherous decline to the lake below.

He plummeted 400 metres to the lake.

… Read the full article here.

I saw Dave on the Club Fat Ass blog has a post about the news, and stressing the importance of knowing when to turn back and not get overwhelmed by the stoke of the moment. I wanted to re-iterate that message, and was reminded of this quote I’ve seen recently:

When going back makes sense, you are going ahead – Wendell Berry



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Fire Breaking Out On Blackcomb

Karl Woll | July 30, 2009 4:35 pm

If the wildfires in Kelowna weren’t enough there are early reports of a fire breaking out on Blackcomb mountain after a lightning strike around 3pm today. Comments like this from people in Whistler are spreading around Twitter:

Holy crap, forest fire literally EXPLODING on the mountain west of Blackcomb. It was just a couple trees and 5 mins later a huge plume. (Via @Kabutar)

@Daveburch posted some pictures shortly after the fire broke out (including one of a water bomber in action)

Around 4pm CTV broke with this report:

Blackcomb Fire

Tourists are being evacuated from Blackcomb Mountain in Whistler, B.C., after a wildfire broke out on the popular mountain Thursday.

The fire is currently estimated at four hectares, and is located north of Crystal Ridge.

The Coastal Fire Centre advises that firefighters are currently attacking the fire from the ground, and water bombers are en route to help extinguish the blaze.

Officials believe the blaze was sparked by lightning on the afternoon of July 30, 2009.

None of the homes located lower on the mountain have been evacuated yet.

Flames from the blaze are visible from Whistler’s main village.

You can get a sense of where the fire is from looking at the Blackcomb webcam, which will also give you an updated shot every 15 minutes.

There is also a fire going in Pemberton (triggered by lightning 2 days ago), and I was alerted to these pictures via Amber Turnau’s blog:


Photo by dbsteers on Flickr.


Photo by dbsteers on Flickr.

Get an update on all BC wildfires here.

As of 4:30pm the Wildfire Management Branch report for the Blackcomb fire is:

blackcomb mountain (V31127)

Location: North of Crystal Ridge
See approximate location on a Mapquest map

Discovered: Thursday, July 30, 2009

Size: 4.0 ha (estimated)

Status: Active
• 0% contained
This fire is currently rank four, which is highly vigorous surface fire behaviour with torching.

Interface: This is not an interface fire.

No further details available at this time.

Cause: Lightning Lightning Caused

Resources
Airtankers are currently being deployed to this fire, and will assess resource needs on arrival.



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New NS Rescue Station & Body Recovered From Cap. River

Karl Woll | July 8, 2009 2:46 pm

Just a quick post on 2 pieces of news. Both North Shore Rescue related, but one good news and one bad.

First the good news about some new funds for North Shore Rescue that will help build a new station in the Indian Arm:

North Vancouver, BC (PRWEB) July 7, 2009 — The money, part of which is being used for a new search and rescue station in Indian Arm, could not have come at a better time, after North Shore Rescue was called out to the top of Indian Arm the same weekend.

“As fate would have it, the day after the golf tournament our team was called up to Granite Falls in Indian Arm to help a 14-year-old male who fractured his ankle when he fell into a creek drainage bed. The hiker was rescued using a Talon helicopter and taken to the Bone Creek Search & Rescue Station,” said Tim Jones of North Shore Rescue.

“This incident highlighted the clear need for a Search & Rescue Station in Indian Arm due to the logistics of performing rescues there and the need for back-up plans if the helicopter option fails. We are working very closely with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation to build a new Station and know it will greatly increase our ability to respond effectively.”

At the Seymour Golf & Country Club, North Shore Rescue team members gave tournament participants a chance to experience a water rescue. Golfers were strapped onto a rescue board and lifted above one of the course’s water hazards. Tournament attendees also had the chance to bid on helicopter flights, guided hiking tours and dinner at the North Shore Rescue cabin during the live auction.

The North Shore, with its amazing mountain ranges that we can ski down in the winter and hike up in the summer, is a great place to live. North Shore Credit Union is a big advocate of people getting outside to exercise in our natural surroundings, but we also want to make sure that people are safe,” noted Louise DeVita, Tournament Organizer and Controller at NSCU.

“North Shore Rescue is a highly-trained and amazingly dedicated group of volunteers. Holding this golf tournament every year is our way of saying thank you for all the hard work you do to keep us safe.”

And some bad news when a fisherman died Monday after a fall into the Capilano River.

A morning fishing trip ended in tragedy for a North Vancouver man who drowned after he fell into the icy waters of the Capilano River.

Just before 8:00 a.m. Monday, the 53-year-old man slipped and fell about seven metres into a deep pool of water as he was fishing from the rocks near the fish hatchery in Capilano River Regional Park.

Another man who was fishing along side of him ran to the hatchery to call for help but by the time he returned the man had already gone under.

North Shore Search and Rescue members recovered the body a short time later but the man could not be revived.

“I can’t believe it, I just saw this guy,” fisherman Al Menhaj said.

“I was here about five this morning and then two people came and one of them is the guy who’s dead now. I don’t think I’m going to come here again for fishing because it’s terrible.”

The victim’s name has not been released.

Mounties are warning people who use the popular park to stay off the rocks, especially when it’s raining as they can be very slippery.

The frigid rivers of North Vancouver, well known for cliff diving and hiking trails, are often deadly. In May, a 6-year-old boy died after falling into the fast-moving Lynn Creek north of the popular Lynn Valley Suspension Bridge.

About 80 people drown each year in British Columbia.



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Digital Meets Outdoor – Hiking Routes For iPhone & Digital Guidebooks

Karl Woll | July 2, 2009 10:39 am

Just a quick post about 2 interesting articles I’ve come across this week.

The first is about a Coquitlam business man who will be on the Dragon’s Den for his start-up, Virtual Outdoor Adventure Guides.

Getting off the beaten track into B.C.’s wilderness can be a challenge when you don’t know the terrain.

Anyone who has hiked, biked or driven B.C.’s back roads knows the drill. You get half-way down a trail and it ends in a dense, green impassable thicket or it turns into a nightmare of ruts and potholes.

If these scenarios sound familiar, you might want to follow the business of a Coquitlam technology company that’s hoping to revolutionize the province’s tourism industry.

A couple of Coquitlam computer engineers, Steve Chapman and Steve Graham, have developed a software system to create virtual guidebooks that take the guesswork out of trip planning.

The company is called Virtual Outdoor Adventures and already it has caught the attention of Dragons’ Den producers who gave the entrepreneurs an opportunity to pitch their business plan to the show’s group of business moguls.

Chapman says he can’t divulge the details of the CBC-TV venture and whether he got any investment capital, but the fact that his business was selected for the show from 4,000 hopefuls is a promising sign.

“It was an intense experience,” is how Chapman describes the morning taping on May 23.

Chapman, his wife Jackie, and Steve Graham were pretty confident going in. They’d already impressed a group of producers, hikers themselves who could see the value of a $20 DVD-ROM that would enable them to plan a safe and enjoyable route that they could print out and take with them or download to an IPOD or Blackberry. But nervousness got the better of them. In their anxiety, the trio misplaced several of their props only to find them later in some obvious places — their pant pockets, for example.

“We kept losing these things and we spent a lot of time looking for them,” Chapman recalled.

But such mishaps are commonplace on the road to success.

The group is now forging ahead on several fronts. An internet site, www.virtualoutdooradventures.com, showcases the company’s product line and Chapman says he’s looking at additional ways to utilize the software he and Graham developed last year.

“We’ve created a software platform that pretty much any trip can be superimposed upon. People can create data and we can create new products using the same software. That’s where the real value is.

“We want to set ourselves up as a digital publisher. I employ the services of third party authors, who collect data. We can create the product from that,” he continued.

The company’s first venture was a digital guide of the Kettle Valley Railway from Myra Station to Penticton, an 80 km ride, with access points, descriptions and photographs. A similar guide is planned for Indian Arm that will include hiking trails and kayaking routes, and Chapman said he’s developing another series covering hikes in the Lower Mainland and the Fraser Valley with local hiking enthusiast and Trails B.C. director Leo Lebrun.

…read the full article

The second article is about a new iPhone App from Trailpeak.com.

Now you don’t have to go any farther than your iPhone to find a hiking trail in your area with the launch of a new application for the popular Apple phone by Trailpeak.com.

The Ottawa-based company, which traces its roots to the mountains around Vancouver where founder Kurt Turchan came up with the idea of a community of online users sharing their hidden hiking gems, is offering its application through Apple’s app store.

The application taps into more than 10,000 trails, with reviews by users and turn-by-turn directions to help hikers locate them.

“We have become Canada’s largest trails website and it all started in Vancouver,” said Turchan, who moved to Ottawa in 2005, four years after he started the website.

It’s social media meets mobile in a trend that is seeing an explosion of services aimed at taking advantage of global positioning systems (GPS) in mobile devices to deliver information targeted to the user’s location.

“We think we are really hitting the nail here, we have such rich content on Trailpeak.com and now we are allowing people to get content on their iPhone, which is very cool,” Turchan said.

While your iPhone can already tell you where the nearest Starbucks is or rate the quality of the restaurant you’re strolling by, Turchan said this is the first app that offers up Canadian hikes.

“It is a fairly simple app right now, but it’s exciting because we are the first ones to do it,” he said. “With your iPhone, you can do a simple search, browsing all trails, or you can click to find trails near you.

“It will bring up a Google map and show with push pins the trails closest to your present location.”

…read the full article.



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More Cougar Encounters In Squamish

Karl Woll | June 17, 2009 12:01 pm

More reports of cougar encounters around Squamish. One involving a toddler in Brackendale (info below), and one related to the above footage. The amazing video, showing a cougar unfazed by the presence of humans, was taken a few days ago on the Stawamus Chief in Squamish. (Is it just me or does the guy seem awfully calm being so close to this animal, and considering the fact his dog may have just been torn to shreds?) This article was put out by the local newspaper, the Chief:

Squamish – A couple of hikers ignored a trail closure at the Stawamus Chief Saturday morning only to come face-to-face with a cougar that brazenly carried off their small, leashed dog.

A two-minute video on youtube.com taken by the unidentified husband of the couple showed the cougar moments after the attack as it sniffed its surroundings, seemingly unfazed by the presence of people just metres away.

The dog was not in sight and its condition was unknown, as the husband explained from behind the camera to another unidentified man.

“[The cougar] attacked once, went up the tree, dropped the dog, and then unfortunately my wife just went nuts. And then the cat decided to attack the dog again,” said the man. “I think if we just calmly backed up then we might… if we still have a dog that’s alive, we might be lucky.”

The incident occurred the day after nine encounters involving an estimated three cougars were reported from Hospital Hill to Valleycliffe to the Chief. The dog survived the attack, according to conservation officer Chris Doyle. However the day before, the cougar killed and ate another dog off its leash, which was the reason for the trail closure.

“Friday there were a few reports of cougar activity and encounters at the Squamish Chief. That cougar later that night attacked and killed a dog on the Squamish Chief trail,” said Doyle. “The trail was closed that night as it was quite late, we planned to go up the next morning, which we did.”

The cougar was treed and killed three quarters of the way up the trail after the second dog attack. It was tracked by two cougar hounds, two conservation officers, a park ranger and a dog handler.

In another frightening incident on Friday, a mother and daughter were approached while in their yard on Hospital Hill. The mother threw rocks at the cat, which turned it around, said Doyle.

“What’s more unusual is a cougar approaching people,” he said. “And to have that many in that short a period of time is quite unusual as well.”

Squamish currently has the highest number of reported cougar encounters in the province, said Doyle. There may be a number of reasons for the heightened presence, he said, however it’s mostly just speculation.

Read the full article.

Also a toddler in nearby Brackendale was attacked but is OK. The cougar was tracked and shot. From CBC:

Conservation officers in Squamish, B.C., have shot and killed a cougar suspected of attacking a three-year-old girl who couldn’t understand why the big kitty didn’t want to “play nice.”

Five conservation officers aided by two dogs and their handlers tracked the cat through several yards and eventually shot it just off Depot Road in the Brackendale neighbourhood, about 60 kilometres north of Vancouver, four hours after the attack Tuesday evening.

DNA samples taken from the cougar will be used to determine if it was the one that attacked the child, they said.The cougar is the second killed by conservation officers since Saturday. The other was shot after two dogs were attacked on a popular hiking trail on Friday and Saturday.

Mother fought off big cat

In the attack on Tuesday, the cougar pounced on Maya Espinoza from behind as she and her mother were walking their dog in Fisherman’s Park near the Squamish River. A neighbour said the mother, whom he called Mo, pulled the cougar off the child and got her to safety.

“Mo turned around and there was a cougar that was kind of on top of Maya, so she picked it up, threw it off, picked up Maya, and ran,” Wade Rowland told CBC News.

The toddler ended up with puncture wounds to her left arm and head. Rowland said the girl will be fine, but didn’t entirely understand what happened.

“Everyone’s taking it well. They’re in good spirits. The little girl, her big comment was, I guess, ‘Why didn’t the kitty play nice?’” said Rowland.

Pablo Espinoza, Maya’s father, told CBC News his daughter thought the cat was playing.

Read the full article.



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