March 28, 2024

Duncan teens spend two nights in vehicle trapped in snow

Two girls and three young men are back home with their parents after being stranded for two nights in freezing temperatures in their vehicle on a remote logging road near Lake Cowichan.

According to Lake Cowichan RCMP, the group headed out Monday on an off-road adventure when their pickup truck ran out of gas in deep snow 45 km northwest of Lake Cowichan. They were out of cell phone range and 12 km from the nearest help.

After one snowy night in the cramped truck cab, one male walked out to get help but he and his father couldn’t reach the other four remaining young people who had no food, water or blankets.
    
By the time the Cowichan Valley Search and Rescue team got the call it was late evening on Tuesday but rescuers couldn’t reach the stranded teens because of a fresh snowfall. The two girls and the two young men had to spend another night huddled together.

Members of the Mid-Island Snowmobile club found the shivering 17-year-old girls on the logging road early Thursday morning. They had been trying to walk for help. “The girls, one wearing open-toed shoes, had collapsed and were falling asleep in the snow,” said Cathy Lambert, the grandmother of one of the young men.  

Mounties say they were suffering hypothermia-related injuries to their feet. The girls and the two 19-year-old men who stayed with the truck were all taken to hospital. “It was scary,” Lambert said, after hearing rescuers were searching for the teens. “It’s a feeling you can’t describe, you wonder if you will ever see the kids again.”

“They are very lucky, they could have all frozen to death,” said Cpl. Warren Potter of Lake Cowichan RCMP. “There’s a lesson here, they were not prepared, they had no emergency kit and they didn’t let anyone know where they were going – very scary.”

Local news from metronews.ca/vancouver

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