Coquitlam Search and Rescue's recent recruitment drive resulted in the team taking on 17 new members. The team saw more applications, and of a higher caliber than any previous year. The membership committee, consisting of 7 regular members, spent three weeks winnowing through applications, and interviewing prospective members, the bring the number down to 17. This is the most new members the team has ever taken on at one time.

Now the task of training these members, no small time commitment, falls to the training committee. However, learning from previous years, Coquitlam SAR issued the new members with several essential items of gear as soon as possible, one of these being the team pager. The member-in-training have started to learn all about the pager in the past few weeks, as Coquitlam SAR was called on the following tasks.  

On Wednesday, November 4th, at 05:00 Coquitlam SAR was paged by Burnaby RCMP to search for a missing SFU Student believed to be hiking on Eagle Ridge. The student had cycled to Buntzen Lake the day before, and his bike had not been noticed by the wardens.

Team members responded to Buntzen Lake. Because the route of the subject was not clear, teams were dispatched to hike the Swan Falls trail, and the Halvor Lunden Trail; this would contain the area where the subject was most likely to be. Teams consisted of one regular SAR member, and 2-3 members in training.

Two more teams were sent, via helicopter, to the middle of the route at Triangulation Point.

One hour into the search the subject was located, cold, wet but in good shape, descending the Halvor Lunden Trail.

Coquitlam SAR was called again on Tuesday evening (November 17) at 18:00 to search for a missing hiker in the same area. Intermittent cell phone contact with the subject found that he was located at Dead Tree Pass, was cold and wet, but in good condition. By this point several teams were already in the field, again gaining Eagle Ridge from the north via Swan Falls Trail, and the south via the Halvor Lunden trail.

With three feet of snow on the ground the hazards in this search were a slip or fall resulting in an injury. Since this is the team's regular training evening, attendance on this search was very high and several members-in-training accompanied each team in the field.

Teams met up with the subject at 19:45, and hiked down to the trailhead by 20:30.

Notable in both these searches:

• both subjects were surprised by darkness, possibly attributable to Daylight Savings Time
• both subjects encountered snow on the route which slowed them down
• both subjects showed remarkable good sense
  • the first stayed in once place overnight since he did not have a flashlight; moving in the dark results in injury and getting lost off the trail
  • the second reported that he was lost, and did have a flashlight so he could follow his tracks back.