A 25-year-old hiker has been found alive after spending three nights stranded alone and unprepared in the Vancouver Island backcountry.
Keshav Jindal was separated from his hiking partner on Aug. 3, shortly after the two friends set out to climb Mount Albert Edward, a 2,100-metre peak in the vast Strathcona Park.
His disappearance sparked a massive three-day search effort involving rescue crews from across southwestern B.C.
That effort paid off Thursday morning when Jindal was spotted from an RCMP helicopter shortly after 10 a.m. The missing man was perched on a cliff ledge inside a crevasse in the side of the mountain.
Comox Valley Search and Rescue manager Paul Berry says rescuers believe Jindal was trying to take a shortcut down to a nearby lake when he found himself “cliffed out” in steep terrain.
Berry said his search team studies the common behaviours of people who become lost in the wilderness and then the team examines likely “decision points” along the subject’s route.
“We believe that he made a decision to go down to the lake and took a shortcut and the shortcut landed him where he was located,” Berry told CTV News Thursday while the rescue was underway.
“This is the area that we have been focusing on with our mountain rescue teams and he was located on a cliff band as we suspected he would be.”
‘Alive and well’
Authorities said Jindal was not equipped for an overnight stay when he and his partner set out for the afternoon hike. He was carrying a cellphone but searchers said it had a low battery even before the two friends became separated.
“He was not spotted in previous helicopter searches, but this morning—sometimes it’s just the right light, the right angle—he was located,” Berry said from the rescue staging area at a lodge on nearby Mountain Washington.
“The subject is alive and well and we are in the midst of affecting a helicopter hoist rescue to bring him here to Raven Lodge and transfer him to ambulance at this moment.”
BC Parks says on its website that easy access to the Mount Albert Edward trailhead “perhaps lulls hikers into complacency” before “serious hazards” present themselves along the route.
“It is no surprise that this is the second-busiest hike for search and rescue on Vancouver Island,” the parks agency says.
