Last night, COSAR was called out for their third rescue in three nights.

A lone driver in a 4wheel drive vehicle had slid out of the packed ruts of an unplowed forestry road above West Kelowna, and became stuck in the sugary snow conditions.

The circumstances required additional assistance, and being out of cell range, the driver used their iPhone’s SOS feature to connect to an Emergency Response Call center, via satellite.  

As the pin pointed location was well known with excellent degree of accuracy, along with no medical concerns, a limited response involving local, knowledgeable operator in their well capable, custom off road vehicle along with SAR member attended the location, and were able to assist the driver, and escort the driver and their vehicle back to pavement.

Progress was captured live during the event, with position tracking during the regular Thursday night COSAR Training exercise, coincidentally focusing on the mapping software. 

This was the 3rd evening in a row, for callouts, with the simple missions completed safely. 

Current backroad snow conditions are very variable with lower sections extremely icy, and upper elevation sections providing minimal traction in sugary type snow. 

It was COSAR’s 17th call of 2024.