*** Second Snowboarder Fatality within days at Cypress Bowl ***

Cypress Bowl, Vancouver, B.C. Canada.

12th February 1997

Only three days after the North Shore and Lions Bay rescue teams recovered the body
of a 24 year-old from a steep gully on Cypress Bowl's Mount Strachan a second snowboarder
has died in a similar incident.

17 year-old Brittany McDowell was 'boarding in the ski hill's out-of-bounds area, when she
was swept down a steep gully on Mount Strachan's west face by a snowslope that appeared to
collapse beneath the her weight. Her two male friends watched as she was swept down the
entire 300 meter length of the upper gully, before the avalanche came to rest in Strachan
Meadows. Amazingly she survived the slide and her friends called down that they were going
for help.

In the intervening time, while her friends went for help, Brittany continued down the
gullies drainage path, crossing the snow-covered route of the Howe Sound Crest Trail, and
descended into the Montizambert Creek drainage.

North Shore Rescue searchers arriving at Strachan Meadows found she was missing from the
avalanche runout area and began to search Montizambert Creek, a well known catchment area
for lost skiers. Brittany was eventually found in a severely hypothermic condition in the
steep, slippery rock-covered creekbed. She had apparently slipped off a log crossing the
creek and sustained a head injury.

Daylight was rapidly fading as a fast-response air-rescue helicopter was called in from
Whistler Village to extricate McDowell from the confines of the narrow creekbed. She
remained in critical condition during the evacuation and CPR was conducted on the flight to
the hospital. Within a few hours of arriving at the hospital she suffered a hypothermia-
induced cardiac arrest and died.

In the past few years increased preventative skier safety measures at Cypress Bowl had
appeared to be successful in reducing the number of out-of-bounds incidents. These two
recent tragic incidents indicate that this public safety program has not been observed by
some young people snowboarding on the ski hill. 

Submitted for the North Shore Rescue
by Martin Colwell.
Lions Bay Search & Rescue
sarinfo@mindlink.bc.ca

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