Mushroom picker rescued
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Updated: October 19, 2009 4:47 PM
It was a close call for a local mushroom picker surviving being lost in the Silver Skagit over the weekend – the incident has triggered Hope Search and Rescue to send out yet another safety message for pickers.
This weekend’s search was very similar to last year’s search when two pickers were lost in the same area of the Silver Skagit Forest Service Road, says Hope SAR president, Chris Stephens.
Mushroom pickers keep their heads down and just go. When they look up they can have no idea of where they are, adds Stephens.
The wild pine mushrooms can go for between $5 a pound and $40 per pound to the picker – depending on the market.
On Friday, a 30-year-old Laidlaw woman searching the forest floor for the delicacy became separated from her group. She was reported missing late Friday night.
“She was not prepared for overnight and not prepared for the weather,” adds Stephens.
Over 30 searchers from volunteer SAR groups from Chilliwack, Kent-Harrison, the Central Fraser Valley and Maple Ridge were also contending with Saturday’s massive downpour. The volunteers used a formation search technique described as “sound sweeps” Friday night and Saturday morning, scouring the area near to where the group of pickers had parked their vehicles.
By late Saturday afternoon two SAR members were sent outside of the search area – a move that may have saved her life.
Her rescue is being attributed to a local teacher whose knowledge of the backwoods was instrumental in getting rescuers into an area far a field of where she was thought to be lost.
It was late Saturday afternoon, when SAR member Scott Benwell sought the backup of teacher John Lang of the Fraser-Cascade School District Hope Mountain School. In search of the woman the two men were about to make the 16-kilometer hike from Highway 3 to the Silver Skagit along the Skagit River Trail – in the dark. Lang drew on his years of experience of taking students on the long trek with the Mountain School.
A few hours later Benwell and Lang would periodically called out in the darkness hoping for any response from the victim. Finally at 10:30 p.m. one came.
The woman was found across the Skagit River, luckily only 100 metres off the Skagit River trail, but 5 kilometers from where she was thought to be picking.
“We think that she got herself on the other side… possibly crossing when the river was low… and the water may have come up in all the rain.”
The two rescuers found a log jam wide enough to cross over safely, and wrapped her in an emergency blanket and any clothing that had remained dry on their long trek.
SAR members in the Skagit then headed into the area on ATVs, set up a rope system to assist her back across the river and finally, by 1:30 Sunday morning, delivered her to an awaiting ambulance.
“She was disoriented, hyperthermia was setting in… if it had been one more night she may not have made it.”
Hope Search and Rescue are reminding mushroom pickers to know the area they are picking in, take a GPS, as well as a compass, and know how to use them.
And ”dress appropriately – be prepared to overnight,” adds Stephens.
