It was on the Lion's Bay search and rescue (SAR) task, April 9, 2017 for five hikers who died in an avalanche on Mount Harvey when their cornice collapsed. They were mostly from the Vancouver Korean Hiking Club. Teams from throughout the region were brought in to support the operation.
Four hikers were quickly found in the morning and one remained. Talon Helicopters transported us to the search area and toed into a spot in the deposition zone to drop us off. A search dog indicated near where I was probing, and I was present for the recovery of the fifth hiker, a woman.
A couple of days later, I was sketching with oil pastels in a sketch book, and did a quick, abstract representation of Mount Harvey as I recalled it from the deposition zone. I didn't think much of it, and shared it with a friend of mine who happens to be Asian.
She replied, "You have the faces of three Asians in this drawing, and their faces are in mourning."
I said, "What are you talking about?" I did not try to draw any faces, let alone Asian ones; just the mountain. I took a second look at my work. Son of a gun if there aren't three faces. My friend suggested that my heart had been drawing in order to get such a result.
I tracked down the Vancouver Korean Hiking Club, offered my condolences, told them about the sketch, offered it, and they gratefully accepted. A few days later, I heard from a woman who was a friend of the woman who died. She thanked me for the drawing, and expressed that one of the faces I had drawn resembled her friend.
It's rare to have such full circle closure with a SAR task, especially such a large operation.
