For the second time in a week, a hiker lost in the North Shore backcountry has avoided calling for help for fear it will lead to fines or charges.
North Shore Rescue volunteers were combing the side of Grouse Mountain until late Monday night looking for a Burnaby man who had wandered off the BCMC Trail and gone bushwhacking for more than three hours before he called the RCMP.
"He wasn't asking for help. In fact, he said he didn't want to be rescued. He just wanted to talk to us about how to get out the next morning," said Tim Jones, North Shore Rescue team leader.
But it wasn't because the wayward hiker wanted to sleep under the stars.
"He said, quote-unquote, 'I can't pay for this rescue. I don't have any money,'" Jones said. "I said, 'We're not charging you a cent' and he said, 'OK, are you going to come and get me now?"
NSR team members used the Grouse Mountain tram to cover the area and locate the man using loudhailers. Once they found him and walked him out, North Vancouver RCMP gave the man a ride home.
"We're in the business of rescuing people. We're not in the business of leaving people out at night," Jones said.
His misplaced fear that North Shore Rescue would charge him for their help put himself and NSR volunteers at risk and made the night rescue that much more difficult, Jones said.
"We want to get a message out to everybody. This is why we have a policy . . . to not charge people. A lot of people are reluctant to phone us because they think they're going to get charged," Jones said.
That fear is compounded when it is an immigrant or tourist whose home country is a police state where "charged" means a lot more than paying a fine, Jones said.
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