VANCOUVER — As the fog rolled in and the sun started to set, Burnaby, B.C. resident Carl Mulherin knew he had a cold, lonely night ahead of him in Pemberton B.C.’s snowy backcountry.
Separated from his three friends after a day snowmobiling on Top of the World glacier, the 33-year-old accepted his fate and prepared for a long night on the icefield, his 1000 Ski-Doo his only company.
“I wasn’t panicked but I was definitely concerned,” he told Vancouver Province on Tuesday. “I wanted to drive out that night, but the chances are I would have either hit a crevasse, gotten more lost or hurt myself.”
It would be 48 hours before he saw another human face.
Mulherin became lost last Saturday afternoon on the heels of a series of backcountry accidents in B.C. that left five dead. Mulherin, an intermediate snowmobiler, had taken a wrong turn as he followed his friends back to their truck. They went down a gully while he kept going straight.
By the time he realized his mistake and tried to backtrack, the fog had become so thick he couldn’t tell what direction he was headed. To top it off, his snowmobile had shut down due to excessive carbon buildup caused by idling.
Instead of panicking, Mulherin, who describes himself as a strong-headed person, kept his cool. Drawing on skills gained through past experiences camping in the snow and years spent as a scout, he assessed the situation. He took stock of his provisions: half a litre of water, a sandwich, four protein bars and two beers. Then he started digging. Using his shovel, he fashioned a four-foot-by-four-foot hole in the snow, then used a side panel of his snowmobile for a roof.
His friends, meanwhile, had made it back to their truck and notified RCMP. A ground and aerial search, involving two helicopters, was launched at first light Sunday amid continued foul weather.
Back at his snow cave, dressed in his snowsuit, Mulherin huddled down that first night and hoped that by morning the weather would clear enough for rescuers to find him. It didn’t.
“The second day I realized that I’m gonna be staying another night and I kind of dug it into a tunnel,” he said of his shelter. “And then when I woke up on Monday, the weather still hadn’t broke so I assumed I was going to be spending another day and another night, so I ended up making it pretty large.”
Concentrating on his shelter was one of the ways Mulherin, a former industrial salesman, said he kept his head screwed on straight and his thoughts positive. Whenever he got bored or needed to heat up, he’d walk in the circle he drew around his camp. That proved particularly useful, he said, on the second night when temperatures dropped dramatically and he found himself shaking with cold.
“I just tried not to wallow on the negatives. I just tried to remind myself that I know people are looking for me,” he said. “The nights were tough because it was dark, it was cold and you couldn’t see anything.”
With the weather still unco-operative Monday morning, Mulherin mentally prepared himself for another night in the snow, his provisions now down to half a sandwich, two power bars, zero water and one beer.
Fortunately, a sudden break in the fog was exactly what the rescue effort, that by then had grown to about 20 people, needed. He was airlifted off the icefield around 2 p.m.
The first thing he did on returning to civilization? Have a beer with his rescuers.
“It was one of the best-tasting ones I’ve ever had,” he said. “It was a surreal moment. At that point, I felt so relieved. I could have been dead. I know I’m so lucky that one, I didn’t lose my head, two, my friends were there looking for me and three, the weather broke. The timing was right.”
Poor weather prevented Mulherin from retrieving his snowmobile Tuesday but he said he’d be back to get it as soon as the conditions were right.
“It was definitely an experience, but nothing that’s turned me away from the sport,” he said.
Vancouver Province
coliviertheprovince.com
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