Missing hiker found alive after 50 days in Canada wilderness, where it fell below minus 17 deg C

BRITISH COLUMBIA – After 50 days surviving in the remote, frigid wilderness of Canada’s northern Rocky Mountains, a missing hiker was found alive this week, the Canadian authorities announced on Nov 27.

The hiker, Mr Sam Benastick, was reported missing on Oct 19 after he went camping from Oct 7 in Redfern-Keily Provincial Park in British Columbia, an area of jagged mountains, fast-changing weather, forest valleys, glaciers, waterfalls and lakes.

The police, rescue workers and his family took part in the search, scanning a landscape of austere mountains and blankets of snow.

But as the days passed without any sign of Mr Benastick, hope began to fade.

Temperatures plunged to below minus 17 deg C. In winter, the park warns of avalanches. Year-round, it warns of bears. At some point, the official search was called off, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

During the search, Mr Benastick’s family spent weeks at the Buffalo Inn Pink Mountain, a hotel near the park, having nightly meetings in the hotel’s fireplace room, Mr Michael Reid, the general manager, said in a phone interview. The family checked out before Mr Benastick had been found, he said.

Then, more than a month after he was reported missing, two men heading to work down a trail spotted a man walking toward them, the police said in a statement.

The men recognised Mr Benastick and took him to the hospital, where the authorities confirmed his identity, the police said.

“Finding Sam alive is the absolute best outcome,” a police spokeswoman, Corporal Madonna Saunderson, said in the statement. “After all the time he was missing,” she added, police had feared this “would not be the outcome”.

The sequence of events that led to Mr Benastick’s going missing was not immediately clear.

According to the police, Mr Benastick said he had stayed in his car for a few days before walking to a creek on a mountainside and camping for another 10 to 15 days.

He told the police that he had then moved into a valley and made camp in a dried-up creek.

Healthcare provider Northern Health said he had been taken to a hospital and was “doing well”. Mr Benastick would not provide a comment at this time, it said in a statement.

He had begun a 10-day camping trip in the park on Oct 7 and his family reported him missing after he failed to check in, according to a GoFundMe page that appeared to be set up by his sister. The fund-raiser’s organiser did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr Reid, the hotel manager, said there had been jubilation when they heard the news that Mr Benastick had been found.

“We all gave (one another) a hug, and we had tears in our eyes,” Mr Reid said. “I’ve got three kids and five grandkids, so I know what they were going through.”

Mr Reid said that Mr Benastick was still in the hospital but that his family would be stopping by “on their way back”. NYTIMES