YOHO NATIONAL PARK — A 19-year-old Calgary man has been swept over Twin Falls, an 80-metre high waterfall in Yoho National Park.
Around 1:30 p.m. Sunday, emergency officials were alerted to an emergency beacon being activated near Takakkaw Falls east of Field, B.C.
RCMP and Parks Canada’s search-and-rescue crew responded, conducting both aerial and ground searches for the Calgary man until about 7:30 p.m. Sunday. The search resumed at first light on Monday morning.
“We reconvened our search effort,” said Tania Peters, a spokeswoman for Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay national parks. “At this point, we are leading a recovery effort for a missing hiker that fell over Twin Falls.”
The search effort, which is concentrated around the base of the waterfall, ended Monday night without finding the man.
Peters said the 19-year old Calgarian was hiking in a group of four — including some of his family members — on a difficult trail called Whaleback, which is about eight kilometres from the Takakkaw Falls parking lot, to the upper Twin Falls when he disappeared.
“We don’t know how he fell, but he did fall into Twin Falls,” said Peters, noting one of the people in his group reported the incident.
The search, which was hampered by the rain Monday, will resume again on Tuesday.
In another rescue on the weekend, Parks Canada’s mountain safety teams had to do a sling rescue for an injured hiker on Mount Temple around 1:30 p.m. Saturday.
A photo shared on the Parks Mountain Safety Facebook page of a Saturday rescue on Mount Temple.
“It was a female scrambler,” said Peters, noting a woman in her 20s hurt her hip and couldn’t put any weight on it. “They did a sling rescue.”
The rescue was caught on video by a couple of different nearby hikers and shared on the Parks Mountain Safety Facebook page.
