‘Gargantuan task’: BASE jumper rescued after spending hours hanging from side of B.C. mountain

This shows where a BASE jumper was left dangling from a mountain, with a red circle added to highlight the location which was 200 metres above the base.

A BASE jumper whose parachute malfunctioned spent over three hours “precariously” dangling from the side of a mountain in sub-zero temperatures in Squamish, B.C., while crews co-ordinated a complex rescue operation.

Crews were called to the Stawamus Chief Wednesday afternoon, according to Mike Teske, a manager with Squamish Search and Rescue.

“Her chute collapsed, causing her to fall down the face of the Chief. Her chute did catch a small outcropping of rocks and a couple of tree stumps which arrested her fall about 100 metres below where she took off,” he said.

“So, she was fully suspended by her parachute, she wasn’t touching anything.”

Teske says crews went up in a helicopter, but determined a long-line rescue would not have been safe in the situation.

“Because her parachute was so precariously hung up, we were concerned that the rotor wash – the wind from the helicopter – would inflate her chute and dislodge it, and then she would fall,” Teske explained.

Instead, crews had to do a rope rescue – which takes longer and is more dangerous and labour intensive for crews, but offered the best chance to rescue the woman.

“It’s a gargantuan effort to put all the people in place, to get all the equipment where it needs to, to set everything up. And then and the important part is to do it safely,” he said.

“I think we had 32 people that responded and we needed absolutely everybody.”

Fifteen members set up on a large ledge above where the woman was hanging and set up a twin tension system, lowering one of the rescuers down.

“When he got to her, he secured her into one of our harnesses, and then we continued to lower down another 200 metres to the BASE of the Chief,” Teske said.

Then, another crew carried the woman – who was mildly hypothermic and had an injured knee – on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance.

The incident, Teske said, was an accident, and the woman herself was able to call for help using her cellphone.

“She was prepared for what she was going to do. She knew what she was doing, and unfortunately it didn’t go as planned,” he said.

“That’s kind of what we’re here for.”

BASE jumping off the Chief is a risky but popular activity, according to Teske.

“There are people jumping off the chief every single day as long as the winds are working out for them. It’s a pretty common sight here, ” he said, adding that the potential danger is a result of the fact that there’s “a low threshold for mistakes.”

In a typical year, Squamish Search and Rescue gets about two rescue calls a year but there are cases in recent years with fatal outcomes. Most recently, a BASE jumper died in December 2024.