From explore magazine, a sad tale of a botched search and rescue which left one women dead and a lot of unanswered questions.
There are 85 search-and-rescue associations in the province, staffed by roughly 4,700 volunteers. However, these groups can only launch a rescue mission after they are enlisted by an agency such as the police, the Coast Guard or the military, and then receive a task number from the Provincial Emergency Program. Regulations prohibit them from self-deploying. The Golden search-and-rescue team is a well-trained unit. Composed of roughly 40 volunteers, it conducts mountain and swift-water rescues, and is one of only six search-and-rescue associations in the province that also does highway vehicle extractions, an additional role that keeps members busy on the treacherous stretch of the Trans-Canada snaking through the Kicking Horse River canyon. Hale estimates that each year his team receives around 90 tasks, many of them involving wilderness missions coordinated among rescue volunteers, police and mountain professionals. But in the case of Blackburn and Fortin, that coordination started going haywire the moment the first report of strange tracks and a distress signal was made.
Hale claims that, after Kicking Horse Mountain Resort staff had checked for any indications of missing skiers, Rudi Gertsch was told to notify the local RCMP detachment about the SOS sighting. Gertsch denies this, saying he left it with the mountain safety people at Kicking Horse, assuming they would follow up on his report. What is known for certain is that for some reason, the RCMP were left in the dark.
