Two kayakers were in need of rescue over the Labour day weekend.
Bob Zimmerman, President and Search Manager of Quesnel Search and Rescue said on Sunday (August 31) two males went out in separate kayaks to float the Cottonwood River from Highway 97 down to the Quesnel/Hixon Road bridge.
“They had given themselves roughly 4 hours to do the float, for their girlfriends to pick them up at the bottom end. They didn’t do much researching because it’s approximately a 10 hour float.”
Zimmerman said they were in lake rated kayaks rather than swift water so they’re a little bit on the big side.
“When they got into the narrow areas where the water got a little rougher they ended up cashing their kayaks on the side of the river,” Zimmerman said, “and rather than staying with the kayaks they left them and went for a walk in the bush trying to find a trail to get down to the old Prince George Highway bridge.”
When the helicopter arrived at the scene Zimmerman said they found the kayaks pretty quickly but there was nobody with them, that was on the Monday (September 1) once we had the helicopters up Monday morning.
“They had to do some flying around and eventually saw the two subjects as they walked out into a clearing and waved at the helicopter. The RCMP were there with their helicopter as well as we had Yellowhead helicopters hired for one of our observers to be onboard.”
Zimmerman said the two males had no overnight equipment with them but they were ok once we picked them up and delivered them to the Quesnel Airport.
“We had Search and Rescue mutual aid from Prince George as well as Central Cariboo Search and Rescue and it was a successful search in the long run.”
Zimmerman had this reminder for the public about the Cottonwood River.
“The water is nice and calm when you’re down by Highway 97. People don’t realize once you get down stream the water gets quite hazardous and dangerous because it narrows right up into canyons so there are rapids, and rocks, and everything like that. We’re just advising people please don’t go past Highway 97 when you’re going down stream on the Cottonwood River.”
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