Hikers credit helicopter tour company with saving them from raging B.C. wildfire
CTV
There was no sign of trouble when Sage Randle and her two friends started hiking Mt. Bruce in southeastern B.C. on Monday – but shortly after they reached the summit, they saw a fast-spreading wildfire moving up the mountain.
The skies were clear on Monday morning when Sage Randle and her two friends set out to hike Mt. Bruce in southeastern B.C.
After stopping for photos and lunch at the peak, they spotted a small plume of smoke on the side of the mountain they had just hiked up.
“Within 10 minutes, it was huge and it was obviously a fire,” said Randle. “The feeling was definitely disbelief. Like, how is this happening right now?”
Relieved she had a cell signal, Randle called local search and rescue, but worried they could not come fast enough to get her and her friends away from the fire, which was quickly moving up the mountain.
That’s when a chopper from Glacier Helicopters Invermere suddenly appeared in the distance. The private tour company has been contracted by the Southeast Fire Centre to help out during the unprecedented wildfire season.
“We were out actively looking at different forest fires, and we saw that fire start to come up out of nowhere really, because we had flown by there half an hour before and there was no smoke,” said Greg Flowitt with Glacier Helicopters. “And so immediately we just thought, OK, we have to look for any people up there, because we never know where people are the mountain.”
Flowitt, who was born and raised in Invermere and knows the area well, flew past the parking lot and saw a single vehicle. He knew which trail the hikers would have been on, and found them on the summit of Mt. Bruce.
