LAKE LOUISE – A Calgary woman is lucky to be alive after falling off a ridge on Mount Victoria, where she desperately clung to the treacherous icy mountainside for more than six hours with nothing but an ice axe and crampons while waiting to be rescued.
Rescuers say the woman in her 20s, who was not roped in, fell off the icy ridge on the 3,464-metre mountain Sunday and tumbled for about 50 metres before managing to stick her axe into the ice.
Not only that, they say she managed to climb back up the steep 50-degree ice slope when she heard the rescue helicopter, but fell again and amazingly stopped her fall a second time.
“Normally if you fall off the ridge you go the whole way, like thousands of feet,” said Marc Ledwidge, Parks Canada’s visitor safety manager for the mountain national parks.
“It’s incredible she stopped herself once, let alone two times. If she hadn’t stopped there, we’d be looking at the bottom. She definitely realizes how close she came.”
Because of extremely bad weather as a big storm hit the region, rescuers were not able to get to the woman until about 9 p.m.. They all spent the night in Abbot Hut.
Get daily National news
The woman was uninjured, suffering only minor frostbite.
The accident happened around 3 p.m. about 3,300 metres up the mountain, which forms part of the famous backdrop to Lake Louise.
The woman and her male climbing partner – who are both described by rescuers as being new to mountaineering – had just turned around when the weather turned bad.
Her partner was not able to get to her when she fell, nor did he have a rope long enough to get her safely up to the ridge, so he headed back along the slippery ridge towards Abbot Hut.
At the hut, which sits astride the wind-swept crest of Abbot Pass at about 2,925 metres, he met a met a woman who was carrying a cell phone and was able to raise the alarm at 4 p.m..
However, a search helicopter was not able to immediately lift off from its base in Canmore because of the storm. When there was a slight break in the weather to finally fly, high winds hampered rescue efforts.
“We tried to find her but we couldn’t because the weather was so bad and turbulent,” Ledwidge said.
“We could see Abbot Pass but the winds were too bad to land so we waited at Plain of Six, but then the fog came in and we were stuck for another half an hour.”
By this time it was getting late and darkness was approaching, but helicopter pilot Lance Cooper, Ledwidge and rescue specialist Aaron Beardmore were able to get into Abbot Pass.
“We got out to the ridge where she was and made voice contract within an hour and a half,” Ledwidge said.
“She was still fine, still hanging on there on the ice slope with her ice axe, kneeling with her crampons.”
Ledwidge lowered Beardmore down to the woman, clipped her in and brought her back up to the ridge. They guided her back down the slick ridge in darkness.
“By then it was pitch black. The ridge is not in very good condition. It’s icy and snow-covered right now and we got back to the hut about 12:30 a.m.,” Ledwidge said.
“If we had got in there the next morning, I am almost certain the outcome would have been different. It’s incredible she managed to hold on there for six hours, just with ice axe and crampons.”
Cathy Ellis is a reporter for the Rocky Mountain Outlook
Comments
Want to discuss? Please read our Commenting Policy first.