Night was closing in as a group of kayakers huddled around their fallen friend Dr. Mark Heard.
A large bonfire blazed beside his cold wet body as he struggled for life. It was keeping him warm and it would guide the rescue helicopter in.
Nearby Heard’s 19-year-old son Jamie kept watch over his father, trying to push the memory of the accident away, but it hovered like the shadows that danced round the fire.
The day, May 10, had started out well for the group of eight expert kayakers from around B.C. and Alberta. It was their second run that day, the first day of their kayaking road trip. This time they chose the challenging but commonly used waters of Callaghan Creek, a Class 5 river, just south of Whistler.
The first pod of four kayakers, which included Heard, a renowned orthopedic surgeon who has repaired the knees of Canadian Olympians and many others, headed down the river.
They came to a notorious feature called The Cave, a hydraulic-fed small waterfall. In high water it is no big deal, but when the water is low it can be treacherous.
Despite his best efforts Heard was sucked into the cave, forced underwater and unable to roll up again, so he did the only thing he could: he got out of his kayak.
Then he was faced with a churning wall of water pushing him deeper into the cave and back under. The only way out was to drag himself hand over hand along the cave wall against the current to the entrance of the cave.
But it was too much.
For five minutes his friends watched for him to come out from behind the waterfall. Instead they saw his facedown body in the waters about 200 metres below the falls. The Cave kept Heard’s kayak standing vertically underwater until it was pulled out Friday by local paddler Steve Whittall, who was hosting all the paddlers at his house for the weeklong holiday.
“(Heard) floated out of The Cave, face down and unconscious and not breathing, basically dead,” said Whittall, a Whistler Search and Rescue volunteer who helped organize Heard’s rescue.
“The first (kayak) rescuer got him to shore and immediately started doing CPR. They couldn’t tell if there was a pulse, but he definitely wasn’t breathing.”
After about 10 breaths Heard struggled to breath on his own. But he needed help. The second pod of kayakers, which had two doctors with it, arrived on the scene and set to work to keep Heard breathing until help could arrive.
“(Heard’s) 19-year-old son was one of the paddlers as well and he was on the river and within metres of going into The Cave as well,” said Whittall.
“It was a stressful thing for him to watch.”
They called 911 around 7 p.m. and after a conference call with Whistler Search and Rescue, Emergency Health Services and the RCMP a full-scale rescue was launched. Talon helicopters flew up from Richmond to do the long line rescue and Blackcomb Helicopters got SAR and their gear to a launch point. Paramedics stood by to evacuate Heard, a former national kayak champion.
Whittall, who was having a dinner party that night, dropped everything and headed to the scene. Colleague Scott Aiken, on his way over to the party, was called in to manage the long line operation. SAR’s Brad Sills coordinated the operation.
“It was right at the crux of daylight, it was basically dark,” said Whittall, who hiked in to the accident site.
“If it hadn’t been for the fire, the pilot and the spotter would not have been able to see where they were going.”
Meanwhile a new protocol in the Vancouver Coastal Region known as Auto-launch kicked in and an air ambulance was dispatched from Vancouver to Whistler before Heard was even extricated from the canyon. That meant as soon as Heard arrived at the Whistler Health Care Centre he could be transported to Vancouver General Hospital, saving up to 45 minutes in transport times.
It was touch and go for several days following the river accident for Heard.
“It could have gone either way and we didn’t know when we got on that plane,” said Heard’s wife Sue who flew out with daughter Meagan from their Canmore, Alberta home as soon as she heard about the accident.
“After the first few days things were starting to improve and he has just made leaps and bounds.
“I’m not sure how I feel yet. You have two kids so you hold it together and re-group later.
“It looks fine but I think we should all go through some counselling.”
Heard is in stable condition but remains in the Intensive Care Unit. His wife said he is very thankful for the all the support he is receiving from friends and family and the many organizations he is associated with, such as Alpine Canada, the national organization in charge of ski racing and development.
“Hopefully he is going to make a recovery and it will be attributable to great action on the part of his friends and a timely rescue,” said Sills of Whistler SAR.
“We used every bit of our training to do (the rescue). The sports we engage in here are high risk no matter what people say.”
In 2004-05 there were 455 calls for Search and Rescue in the Southwest region of B.C., which includes Whistler. Of those, 123 people had to be rescued by SAR with total costs for operations at $480,852.32.
