Barefoot, hypothermic and into his third day lost in the woods, a Calgary hunter was in astonishingly good shape when he was found in the bush west of Sundre, says a Rocky Mountain House Search and Rescue volunteer.
“We were quite pleased to find him walking,” said Doug Ritchie, a veteran volunteer and instructor.
“It’s nice to have a success, to find someone who is still walking around.”
All things considered, the hunter was “amazingly well” when found, he said.
“He was hypothermic to the point where he was starting to stumble and fall. For whatever reason, he had taken his boots and socks off, so his feet were a mess.”
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The hunter, who was described as experienced, had gone out with his son and a friend in the Williams Creek area, west of Sundre, on Saturday morning. He spotted a deer and followed it on an animal track. The man is Aboriginal and was hunting legally.
That was when he was last seen by the others, who searched for him unsuccessfully before alerting RCMP that evening.
A search was launched on Sunday morning and involved family members, RCMP, including a dog unit, Clearwater Fire Rescue, Rocky Mountain House Search and Rescue and almost a dozen Sundre Search and Rescue volunteers.
Ritchie said the search began at “point last seen” and searchers spread out looking for tracks or any other signs of human movement.
“We also go to the most likely places he might have gone to and check those out.”
Clearwater Fire Rescue, from Rocky Mountain House, employed a drone to get a bird’s-eye view above the forest canopy.
Tracks were found in patches of snow remaining in the woods, and by Sunday evening, the trail led to a creek.
“It took almost until dark when we were able to find that he had fallen into a creek and gotten out the other side. Unfortunately, getting across the creek was an issue.”
The spring-melt-swollen creek was full of chunks of ice and too dangerous to cross, and it was too dark to call in a helicopter. Searchers had to wait until the following morning, when an RCMP chopper was called in to leap-frog searchers over the creek to continue the quest for the missing man.
“It looked like after he had fallen in, he walked pretty hard for quite a ways. I’m sure that’s how he re-warmed himself — doing a good, hard walk.”
Searchers found a number of spots where the man had apparently stopped for some time. They found no signs fires had been lit, but they might have been. The overnight temperatures were a few degrees below zero and the hunter was wearing a hoodie-like jacket.
At about 8:30 p.m. on Monday, 60 hours after he was last seen, the hunter was found at a logging road, about 20 kilometres from his starting point, although because of his snaking route, he had walked much further.
Ritchie said when lost in the woods, the best advice is stay put.
“That was kind of our issue: he kept walking, and so we had to keep tracking him and he ended up going a long ways. If he had stayed put, we probably would have found him the first day we went out.”
The hunter was taken to hospital in Sundre and was reportedly transferred to Calgary for further treatment.
pcowley@reddeeradvocate.com
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