EP 17: A Week in Cathedral Provincial Park - Lynne and Rick's Story

[00:00:00] - [Nina]
Lynne Carmody and Rick Moynan, a couple from North Bay, Ontario, went missing on June 22, 2015 in the backcountry of Cathedral Provincial Park in Southern BC. Days went by as searchers scoured their woods around their last known location. The search was called off after a week. Today, we sat down for an interview with Lynne and Rick. That's right.

[00:00:23] - [Nina]
They survived. In fact, they walked out on their own just after their family members had said their goodbyes looking over the Cathedral Lakes wilderness. This is episode 17, a week in Cathedral Provincial Park. Lynne and Rick's story. Welcome to mishaps and mysteries.

[00:00:43] - [Nina]
I'm your host, Nina.

[00:00:45] - [Cassie]
And I'm your host, Cassie. Our podcast explores stories of misadventures in the wild landscapes of British Columbia, Canada. Thanks for being here with us today. Cathedral Provincial Park sits between the dry Okanagan and the Cascade Mountains. It doesn't get any more south either.

[00:01:05] - [Cassie]
The park's southern end rests on the Canada US border. It's very mountainous with beautiful blue lakes, a jagged landscape. Geologically, it's very interesting with its quartz monzonite towers and huge basalt forms. It's also known for its mountain goats. Truly a spectacular setting.

[00:01:30] - [Cassie]
And in 2015, Lynne Carmody and Rick Moynin were visiting the park and staying at Cathedral Lakes Lodge. They left from the lodge for a walk and ended up getting lost. But amazingly, they survived a week out in that unique wilderness. Rick and Lynne, welcome to mishaps and mysteries.

[00:01:49] - [Lynne]
Thank you very much. Thanks for having us.

[00:01:53] - [Cassie]
Tell us a bit about your lives at the time, back in 2015 and what brought you to Cathedral Lakes?

[00:01:59] - [Rick]
Well, we were fairly new partners and I had worked at the lodge the summer before as a chef. And I finally convinced Lynne to retire. And so our goal was to head out west on a... On our first big kind of adventure together. And I called the lodge to see if they had any need for some help.

[00:02:23] - [Rick]
And the owner said that he had his chef all set up for the summer, but that they were gonna do some work on the lodge for a week at the beginning of the season. And if Lynne and I wanted to go up and cook, we could kind of be part of the crew. So we made that part of our plans and he was so happy with the job we did that he said, look, go and finish your trip. And on your way back, I want you to come and stay with us and just be our guest. So we did that, and that's when we took our hike. And we had been hiking the whole week that we were there. So we were familiar with a number of lakes and hikes that we did, and we just wanted to go back.

[00:03:05] - [Cassie]
What was the particular walk that you were doing? Do you remember?

[00:03:09] - [Rick]
Was... So the the big walk that a lot of... And and this is backcountry that professional hikers do as a challenge. And it's called the Rim Walk. And it it goes around the whole area and you really follow kind of the spine of the mountains around that area.

[00:03:29] - [Rick]
That we didn't set out to do that. Just set out to go and have some lunch kind of in a nice, pretty spot. And we ended up feeling pretty good. Yeah. We went, I think it was, I could be wrong, but lady slipper late because we sat and we had most of our lunch there. It was a beautiful day.

[00:03:49] - [Lynne]
And that's where we told the log where we were going. We were just going to hike for the afternoon, but then it was such a beautiful day. And we saw the trail that goes up to do the rim walk. And that's where we started going.

[00:04:07] - [Rick]
And then didn't, again, not being experienced back country hikers, we expected kind of more of the kind of signs you get on a lot of the hikes you would go in a provincial park or something, you know, where it says go this way or go in and it shows signs. Up there, it's it's cairns and walking paths. And you have to really be able to know what to recognize.

[00:04:31] - [Nina]
Right. Make sure

[00:04:31] - [Rick]
that you're And the right we didn't have that experience. As a matter of fact, the right way didn't look like the right way to us. Yeah. So we made some initial bad decisions and decided to go a different way. That's how we ended up going down the wrong valley.

[00:04:47] - [Rick]
Then it was like 04:00 and it was getting too late to go back. That's when we decided that we knew we were lost and it was time to hunker down.

[00:04:56] - [Lynne]
Just stay overnight and figure it out in the morning.

[00:04:59] - [Nina]
Yeah. Tell us what you had with you. You were just out for a picnic. So tell us what you had and clothing wise as well.

[00:05:06] - [Lynne]
So we had... So the lodge packed us a lunch for the day. And, so we, we sat and we ate our sandwiches and

[00:05:14] - [Rick]
So what? Two sandwiches each? Yeah.

[00:05:16] - [Lynne]
We had an... Well, nice big sandwich. And, what we had left was two oranges and three cookies and some cups. So we had that and I carried that in my purse. I had this jeans satchel that I always carried around.

[00:05:30] - [Lynne]
So I just put those in the paper bags back in my purse. And what were you wearing? And so I was wearing some yoga pants with a a blue sleeveless top underneath and then a a lime green waffle weave shirt over top. Okay. And and hiking shoes.

[00:05:51] - [Nina]
Nice and bright. Yeah.

[00:05:53] - [Lynne]
What... The lime green? It was nice and bright. However, there's a lot of nice green in those mountains.

[00:06:00] - [Rick]
And and we should mention, Lynne also had on pink underwear, which will be important later.

[00:06:05] - [Nina]
Yes.

[00:06:08] - [Rick]
So... And I had on shorts and a and a t shirt, two pairs of socks, which I always wear lots of warm socks. I just like it for the comfort and, hikers as well. So that was it.

[00:06:20] - [Lynne]
So all we had was, my purse and the lung, my phone, and Rick had his little pack sack. And we had water and a one water bottle, and that's all. Yeah.

[00:06:33] - [Nina]
K. So you decided you were gonna stay the night, and how did you select the spot in which you were gonna stay?

[00:06:40] - [Rick]
Well, the first night, we we didn't really... We just dropped where we were, which was beside a creek. It was very damp. It was around 05:00 and we were exhausted. We we went under a a big, pine tree. Was under pine tree.

[00:06:58] - [Rick]
Just again, because, you know, there's needles on the ground and you can kind of burrow in there a little bit.

[00:07:03] - [Lynne]
And it was a bit misty and and it was cool and damp. We went under this tree and... But we broke branches from another place and packed them around the bottom just to give us some more warmth because it was quite cool. And then, and there was these little gnats that were flying around Mosquitoes.

[00:07:24] - [Lynne]
In like when we were laying down. And so we had the paper bags from our lunch still. So we we ripped them in one half and put them over our faces when we were under this tree just to keep those away.

[00:07:40] - [Nina]
That's such good thinking. That's really good thinking. Yeah.

[00:07:42] - [Lynne]
Always land. That... Yeah. Well, yeah, that was my... I never throw anything away when I'm when I'm in the bush, when I'm anywhere.

[00:07:50] - [Lynne]
I just need it sometime. Right? So

[00:07:53] - [Rick]
And we might... I must have had a long sleeve shirt because I remember putting our hands inside our sleeves, you know, just to... And holding on to the end of the sleeves just to keep the bugs away.

[00:08:03] - [Nina]
Right. Right.

[00:08:05] - [Rick]
And so we made it through that night Mhmm. And weren't, you know, in really bad shape the next day. We were just tired. But that was when we had to make some decisions about, okay, now what are we gonna do? I should say from, I think I can speak for both of us.

[00:08:20] - [Rick]
There was never any panic. We didn't think, oh my God, you know, we're never gonna get out of here. That wasn't part of our sort of vocabulary. It was just, okay, what's the next step? And so that morning we decided, well, we gotta walk back up the way we came, all of the creek and keep water close so that we'd have something to drink.

[00:08:42] - [Rick]
As we started walking, all of these other tributaries were coming in and we thought, you know, shoot, we don't know which tributary we came down. And so there was a big rock slide at that point, and it was probably close to a 100 yards from bottom to top. And we could see sort of three quarters of the way up the rock slide was this huge tree that had managed to survive when the rock slide happened. And we thought, well, if we could get up there, then if, you know, somebody comes by to try and find us, we would be more visible against the rocks than we would be down in the bush. Yeah.

[00:09:21] - [Rick]
It was quite an open area. So we would be visible. Yeah.

[00:09:26] - [Lynne]
If somebody just... You know, they would be able to see us more.

[00:09:29] - [Rick]
Yeah. And it... But it was a scramble. Like, was it was a serious hill that you had to test each hand and foothold to make

[00:09:37] - [Nina]
sure Right. Right. Yeah.

[00:09:38] - [Rick]
Start to be driving more.

[00:09:40] - [Nina]
Yeah. Well,

[00:09:41] - [Rick]
I remember when we got up there, there was a a squirrel in the tree who was very unhappy to see us. He doesn't know that it was his tree. Anyway, we started... I call it our nest. We quickly kind of started to turn the backside of the tree, the uphill side into an area we could sleep.

[00:10:02] - [Lynne]
So we had, and we were in the sun by this time, which before I just remember being very chilly because we were down in that valley and we were out of the sun. Once we started climbing up that rock slide, it was like, Oh, this is so nice. Cause it was warm behind this big balsam tree, it was, on a slant. So we started just use a rock and just tried to smooth out a portion where we could lay And

[00:10:31] - [Lynne]
so that's what we did. And then we broke branches off another off balsam tree to make a bed. And then I don't know if that's when we did the sides too.

[00:10:41] - [Rick]
Well, I think what we found, we had other branches for sleeping that Lynne would lie in and I would cover her. And then I would cuddle in kind of and pull the rest of the branches over top. But I don't know if you know how wind works, but it was coming down the hill and it was hitting us. Over the course of the week, we kind of built up the uphill side of our nest with rocks so that it was like a windbreak for us.

[00:11:07] - [Lynne]
And we had made, at the bottom and the top of this bed, had made a wood branches as a screen too, so that wind wouldn't come in. And I remember Rick using the string from his packs up to kind of weave, to hold it together at the bottom.

[00:11:24] - [Rick]
Good day.

[00:11:25] - [Lynne]
Yeah. And that's... But the the branches that we covered ourselves with at nighttime, what it did was it kept the dew off, and so it was warmer. Yeah. Okay.

[00:11:38] - [Lynne]
Yeah.

[00:11:38] - [Rick]
And most of the bugs are away too.

[00:11:40] - [Lynne]
Yeah. I mean, there was a few little ants crawling around and stuff, but, like, nothing was biting us or anything. And... But that kept us warm at night.

[00:11:51] - [Nina]
What about the hunger? So that would have been Yeah. You know, twenty four hours with no food.

[00:11:57] - [Rick]
I carry a little extra weight, so it wasn't hurting me too much to do without a couple of days. And honestly, though, even in the part that you've heard us talk about so far, I think you got the idea that we were focusing on the things we could control, and we were, doing what we could to improve our situation. We didn't have that much food with us. So, honestly, we really didn't think about it that much, even to the point that we talk about this all the time that it got to Friday of the week. This happened on a on a Monday.

[00:12:32] - [Rick]
So we get to Friday, and I remember going into Lynne's little purse for something, and there was an orange that was getting dried up. I said, you know, I think maybe we should eat this because otherwise we're going have

[00:12:44] - [Lynne]
to throw it out. And I thought all we'd had all week was water. But we also had the three cookies and they were in this little white bag. And while I used to sleep on my purse, I use it as a pillow. Well, the cookies were all just kind of crumbly.

[00:13:00] - [Lynne]
We, I remember having some, like a little pile of cookie in my hand. And so I would eat some and Rick would eat some and, you know, then we'd save some just, you know, just Yeah. Like Rick said, we we never really thought about it because we were busy trying to keep ourselves comfortable. Yeah.

[00:13:19] - [Nina]
Yeah. Okay.

[00:13:21] - [Lynne]
The first orange, we ate the peelings because you don't throw anything away and that's food. But the last one, the peelings were getting so dry. Did we...

[00:13:30] - [Rick]
I don't remember that. We ate it. Well, you

[00:13:32] - [Lynne]
didn't want to, but I I said, yes, we should.

[00:13:36] - [Cassie]
So that's so interesting that you really weren't hungry. You weren't you weren't stuck on thinking about food. You were just busy trying to survive and be comfortable.

[00:13:44] - [Nina]
Yep. You found water and you were able to Yeah. Stay And not panic. And that's a common theme that we found with survivor stories is the survivors are always able to remain calm.

[00:13:58] - [Lynne]
Yeah. And I think being together, you know, we made decisions together, and I didn't panic. Rick didn't panic. It wasn't... It was just going day to day to make ourselves more comfortable.

[00:14:11] - [Lynne]
And we went for water twice a day in the morning, and then we... Near the end of the day just so we'd have water for overnight or something. That was the biggest activity every day was going down there and getting the water. We take turns.

[00:14:25] - [Rick]
Because you're going down that that rock slide and it's a scramble. So it it took, I don't know, probably a good twenty minutes or so to go one way. Yeah. And then when you... You were the person that went down, you would kinda guzzle enough water that when you got back up, the other person could drink most of the bottle.

[00:14:44] - [Rick]
We both stayed hydrated.

[00:14:47] - [Lynne]
But it's interesting that we... I think the first question people say was, weren't you hungry? The explanation is you don't think about you don't think about... You don't have it.

[00:14:59] - [Nina]
When did you decide to make the decision that that you weren't gonna be found and you were gonna have to walk out?

[00:15:06] - [Rick]
Well, I think by day four or five, let me start backwards a little bit first.

[00:15:10] - [Nina]
Okay. Yeah.

[00:15:11] - [Rick]
That what we did see while we were there, and and remember, every day we did things to improve our situation. So we built steps in the rock slide that took us down five or six yards away from the tree so that if somebody did go by, we could quickly go down the steps. And instead of having to worry about we were going to step on a rock that was going to slide, we built platform if you like. And so that was something we did. We kept our feet dry by each taking turns, taking our shoes and socks off and airing them out and airing the socks out and all that sort of stuff.

[00:15:48] - [Rick]
During the first four or five days, we could see where the search was taking place, which was up at the top of the mountain in a in a particular circle if you like. And we knew that that's where they expected to see us. So we knew that's where we had to get back to. And so in planning for that, we decided it was about the Friday. I think we finally said, look, if they don't find us by the end of Saturday, then Sunday morning, we gotta start walk.

[00:16:16] - [Rick]
And we we kinda knew the time just from the way the sun hit the opposite side of the valley. And we knew we wanted to leave sort of around seven in the morning because the sun was up. It wasn't on our side of the valley, but it was bright enough we could see. And my phone was dead by then. And so, but we, I mean, just where the sun came up every day and the helicopters, we knew the direction

[00:16:42] - [Lynne]
that we had to go, but

[00:16:44] - [Rick]
we had to go back down into the trees and, work our way in that direction. The two things we decided number one was we were gonna keep either the water within sight or sound so that as we walk and we knew we had to walk, continue walking uphill. So there was no downhill. It was uphill and it was to the left, which I'm thinking in terms of direction would have been to the west or whatever it was. But the trees are so dense and there's so much deadfall because there's nothing else there that we would literally have to look 20 or 30 yards ahead and kind of pick a route through the rocks and the deadfall and everything else.

[00:17:29] - [Rick]
I would go and get to a certain spot and then rest while Lynne followed the route or vice versa until we got above the tree line, which took till about 01:00. And so we, the first five or six hours was just getting out of the trees back on top of the mountain. So that was how we kind of decided that we had to walk out because we both knew that they weren't going to search for

[00:17:53] - [Lynne]
us forever. We saw the helicopters and just, search noise right up until dusk on the Saturday night. And we just knew that was the longest that they had been looking from what we could tell. And we just knew that that was probably going to be it. Right.

[00:18:13] - [Cassie]
Yeah. Like it was their final push sort of That's right.

[00:18:18] - [Rick]
And we heard from them after that, on the Sunday, in fact, they weren't looking for us anymore. They were looking for our bodies because they had done everything they could.

[00:18:28] - [Nina]
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:30] - [Rick]
And now they're looking over cliffs and places where we would have had an accident or something that would have caused us not to make it back.

[00:18:37] - [Lynne]
And you know, when we left that morning on Saturday, it was about seven, we figured. And

[00:18:43] - [Rick]
On Sunday.

[00:18:44] - [Lynne]
On Sunday. And we, you know, we just thought if it takes us a couple of days to find our way back, we're good with that.

[00:18:51] - [Rick]
Yeah. Because then we

[00:18:52] - [Lynne]
build another little thing, but we... The the weather was on our side the whole time we were there because it was beautiful weather. We didn't have to deal with any, you know, inclement weather. Yeah.

[00:19:03] - [Nina]
Yeah. Tell us about the pink underwear.

[00:19:05] - [Lynne]
Yeah. You

[00:19:07] - [Rick]
go ahead. It's your underwear. You better.

[00:19:12] - [Lynne]
As the week went on, we each took turns going out onto the watch, which was away from the tree and partly down this rock slide. And we had found this great big, y shaped piece of it looked like driftwood, but it was just old bare wood, dry wood. And we had that anchored in the rocks so that it was up. And I had stretched my pink underwear this... On the y hoping that, you know, what...

[00:19:44] - [Lynne]
Because we had seen the helicopters and, I mean, they weren't really, really close yet, but we figured if they were coming, they would see it. But

[00:19:53] - [Rick]
because everything's brown and green. So So something pink would stand out.

[00:19:57] - [Nina]
Yeah. Absolutely. It's a... It's a great idea.

[00:19:59] - [Lynne]
Yeah. And I I find my lime green shirt hanging out there too, but, you know, we were just a little piece in that whole big area and they never saw it. And I asked the helicopter pilot, you know, I mean, I told them I had my pink underwear hanging out there and, but they didn't see that.

[00:20:18] - [Rick]
No. And he actually said, well, I wish I had seen that.

[00:20:21] - [Lynne]
Like, they were getting closer and closer to where we were, the helicopters. It was on the Friday that we could see a helicopter, the rope, and the the care... The the chair, what do you call it? With the person in it, they were lowering him down onto the ground.

[00:20:39] - [Nina]
Okay. Okay.

[00:20:40] - [Lynne]
We could see them, but mean, we yelled, we whistled, we, you know, all that. They just, they didn't hear us and well, it would be loud with the helicopter and they were still a ways away. I was just gonna say, but the Friday on my watch, when I was out on the rock slide, I saw a helicopter coming down the valley. I could see the front lights of the helicopter. It was coming our way.

[00:21:06] - [Lynne]
They were going to come right past us and at eye level at eye levels. So I yelled to Rick. I said, they're coming, they're coming.

[00:21:13] - [Rick]
They're going to see us.

[00:21:14] - [Lynne]
Yes. So he, he got out of the nest and then got down onto where I was. And they, they went right past us on an eye level and I was waving and screaming and they went right past us. And I just said, well, they're probably just gonna go down the valley ways and turn around because they've seen us. They had to have seen us.

[00:21:36] - [Lynne]
And they went right past.

[00:21:38] - [Rick]
Wow. Yeah. Focusing down in the trees. They're focusing up where we were. And that may have changed because in our interview after, they talked about that and said we've gotta be more aware of what's going on everywhere, not just down.

[00:21:54] - [Nina]
Right. Cass and I did another episode where survivor didn't speak to search and rescue after. Yeah. I think it's super valuable to have that conversation with them after and share what happened.

[00:22:07] - [Rick]
And just to be clear, it actually was a part of search and rescue, but it was the RCMP who stepped forward and asked if we would do an interview with them. Okay. And they wanted to use it for their training purposes or whatever. And maybe search and rescue, you know, got it afterwards. I don't know.

[00:22:25] - [Nina]
But Okay. Okay.

[00:22:26] - [Rick]
Yeah. Okay. The gentleman who was the the dog handler, the guy who for twenty six years had been doing it said afterwards, could we do an interview? And Yeah. And we did.

[00:22:36] - [Rick]
And it was very worthwhile.

[00:22:38] - [Lynne]
They came to our motel. They came to the motel and and they did the video with us there. So it was just the four of us and they just asked us questions and we answers. Yep.

[00:22:52] - [Cassie]
Tell me about the feeling when searchers were so close and yet you couldn't get their attention.

[00:23:00] - [Lynne]
That was probably my only flip out. Yeah. When that helicopter went back up the valley, I couldn't believe that they didn't see us, and that was very, very frustrating because we did everything we could. You use words you don't usually use.

[00:23:18] - [Lynne]
Yeah. There was foul language there. And... But, you know, now that we... Now we we understand, like, they...

[00:23:26] - [Lynne]
I mean, we are just little little pieces in that whole valley. I mean, I could see the color of his hat and I... The helicopter was purple and yellow. And, I mean, we just felt they were so close, but they didn't see us.

[00:23:42] - [Cassie]
So we actually had the pleasure of meeting you two for lunch when you happen to be traveling on Vancouver Island this summer.

[00:23:49] - [Rick]
That was our pleasure too.

[00:23:52] - [Cassie]
Paul Barry also joined us who we interviewed for episode 10, and that was significant because he was the search manager on the day you were found. And it was really powerful to be able to listen to your experience and to witness you meeting Paul. I just wanna hear what it was like for you to meet with him and what role has search and rescue played in shaping your story now that you look back?

[00:24:13] - [Rick]
Well, when we walked out and came down and that stuff was all done, the media wanted to talk to us. And we really had found out how much time and effort had been put into looking for us. We were astounded. There was, I think, 400, 300 people, something like that had, and they don't get paid, they're volunteers. So these people had taken times out of their lives to try and find us.

[00:24:45] - [Rick]
And Paul was the leader of that particular search and rescue. And, I think we wanted to make sure that the media understood that. So we didn't actually go to talk to the media. We sent both of our daughters because we thought that way they could maybe swing the conversation a little easier than if we were there ourselves. Unfortunate...

[00:25:10] - [Rick]
I mean, they did a little bit, but not enough. And one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you guys was because you do focus a bit on that whole search and rescue and and the importance of that kind of stuff in BC. So meeting Paul was very, very cool. He's an incredible guy who's who's committed. I don't wanna guess how much of his lifetime to, you know, looking after other people and sometimes just their stupid mistakes.

[00:25:40] - [Rick]
It's it's pretty incredible. So, yeah, for me, was it was just kind of a little bit of the completion of the whole thing that had happened. We're just glad that he was there and you guys were there. And I don't know, what about you, Linda? Yeah.

[00:25:52] - [Lynne]
When we walked out to the lodge, everything happened very quickly. So we didn't get to meet anybody really other than the two RCMP that we did the video with. So all the other people, we never got to meet anyone after the fact, after we got home and it was either the next year or the year after we were back out West, we met a lady named Tracy Russell, and she she either owned the ranch in Carameos or she ran it. But we had breakfast with her before we left. Then we we met her and her husband two years later at a winery when we were trapped.

[00:26:32] - [Lynne]
And the only other person is, her name is Kelly Cornichan. She she lives in Hundred Mile House, and she was a tracker at the time. She was with a group of people and they were called in probably two days before we walked out at the end, near the ending of the search. She had sent me a message soon after we were at home and wanted a picture of the soles of our boots because they had been tracking and they were... They...

[00:27:02] - [Lynne]
A group, they were sure that it was our boots that they found when we sent her the pictures. It was, but

[00:27:09] - [Nina]
it all

[00:27:10] - [Lynne]
off after that. So I was out there this spring and my daughter lives in Kamloops. We went to Hundred And 8 Mile house and I met her.

[00:27:21] - [Nina]
Amazing. Yeah.

[00:27:22] - [Lynne]
We sat and chatted about the whole thing again.

[00:27:26] - [Nina]
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:28] - [Lynne]
But those are the only people that we have met.

[00:27:31] - [Nina]
Okay. Can you tell us about walking out and what that felt like?

[00:27:38] - [Rick]
So we'd made the decision the day before. And so that morning, you know, you kind of, you know, do your boots up a little tighter and make sure you got everything in your pack sack that's coming with you. I remember being a little bit apprehensive about the whole thing until I took about three or four steps. And then it was just like, you know what? We're gonna do this.

[00:28:05] - [Rick]
It was actually... It was enjoyable. I I mean, that sounds wrong, but the walkout was kind of us just, okay, it's time to get back to our life and let's get at it. I mean, a cute story. I'm gonna sound like a big suck here.

[00:28:25] - [Rick]
But but when we got above the tree line, you know, it's that whole... The sound of music, you know, the wildflowers Yeah. Above the trees. And I had stopped to pick a little bouquet of flowers for Lynne because she was behind me. And when I turned around, she had a bouquet of flowers for me.

[00:28:46] - [Rick]
But but that just shows you our kind of our our mindset at the time. Yeah. We were enjoying every moment. We came across some areas, of course, that we hadn't seen before as we were climbing out and it was like, oh, this is kinda cool. You know, like, if we'd come across a grizzly or we had gotten lost again, things obviously wouldn't have been quite as happy.

[00:29:10] - [Rick]
But the way it turned out, I mean, we got on top of the mountain. We saw a sign that said this way to the lodge. We got back.

[00:29:17] - [Lynne]
And I think too, when we left that morning, looking at it from being lost, like, I had a difficulty with one of my feet. When we left that morning, Rick was ahead. And so I was just walking carefully as I went. So I was always slower, but I trusted him that he was going in the right direction. I mean, if I thought I saw going somewhere else without hearing water, I would would have held him back, but I trusted him that he was going in the right direction.

[00:29:50] - [Lynne]
And so I was going more slow just watching. I didn't step in any water. I didn't want to get my feet wet and I was just touching them. Yeah. Again, it was beautiful weather and we always had the weather on our side.

[00:30:02] - [Lynne]
When we came up out of those trees and saw a trail, it was Actually, helicopter went over. One

[00:30:10] - [Rick]
of the helicopters went over while we were on top of the mountain and we waved to them and they waved back. They thought we were just hikers out

[00:30:17] - [Nina]
Oh, wow. My goodness. Yeah.

[00:30:20] - [Rick]
So... And at that point we said, well, they're not gonna stop for us. We're walking back to the camp. The heck with this.

[00:30:26] - [Lynne]
We we knew we knew we were on the right trail, and we just... Well, there was one said, lodge this way. So we were sticking on the trail and stayed on the switchbacks. And We didn't realize it was a

[00:30:37] - [Rick]
big deal. We... When when we walked into the lodge and, of course, things, like Lynne said, started to happen fairly quickly. You know, people were saying, oh my god. You guys, you've made it.

[00:30:49] - [Rick]
You know? Or or you must... Let me get you some water. And we're like, no. We got we got water.

[00:30:53] - [Rick]
We're okay. Here's some food. Here's some food. Well, we're not really hungry. And, you know, and then it just...

[00:30:58] - [Rick]
It it kept snowballing. And I remember they very quickly got us in the helicopter to go down to base camp. And I remember sitting in the back of the helicopter looking at Lynne and saying, I think this is a pretty big deal. Yeah. We might be in a bit of trouble here.

[00:31:15] - [Rick]
You know? Like, we just didn't know that so much was going on.

[00:31:19] - [Lynne]
And we... When we got into the lodge, and there was all kinds of people there, people who were staying there and then some of the searchers. And and I remember Richard, the owner of the lodge, he was standing a little ways away. I looked at him and he just mouthed the words, your kids are here. And you know, well, you just get, it's overwhelming.

[00:31:43] - [Rick]
Yeah. Because you think, oh my God, like this all of a sudden hits home.

[00:31:47] - [Lynne]
And we still didn't know the gravity of everything. Were learning things as we went.

[00:31:55] - [Rick]
When Yeah. It was cool, they brought us in the back of the hospital just to check us out. Yeah.

[00:32:00] - [Nina]
Yeah.

[00:32:01] - [Rick]
Everybody clapped and cheered. Yeah. Wow. And that that hit home too because, I mean, nurses, doctors, even patients lying in beds were clapping. And it's like, wow.

[00:32:12] - [Rick]
I guess maybe we expected to make it or something. Know?

[00:32:16] - [Cassie]
That, the hospital in Karamios, or where where did you end

[00:32:19] - [Lynne]
up? It have been Penticton because we we were on the helicopter for a little while. Yeah.

[00:32:25] - [Rick]
Okay. Okay.

[00:32:26] - [Lynne]
They were they were all so good to us at the hospital too. And our... So our kids were there. I remember sitting on the bed because we had to get tetanus shots, and they wanted to look at my foot and stuff like... But my daughter was on the phone.

[00:32:40] - [Lynne]
She just said, mom, you've got to talk to Dawn, who is a good friend of mine. She is absolutely hysterical. So she just puts me on the phone and, you know, I said, we're here, we're good. Everything's fine. But hearing all those things, the more we learned, the more how it affected people was is a big deal.

[00:33:02] - [Cassie]
When you ultimately came back to the lodge, you learned that your your kids had actually been flown out to a viewpoint by search and rescue as sort of to allow them an opportunity to say goodbye. When you learned about that, how did that feel? And on the other end, what what were their emotions after you were found and they had kind of just said their goodbyes?

[00:33:23] - [Lynne]
For me, I mean, when we arrived at the lodge, that was around the same time that they were up on the mountain, the last sort of known place where we were saying their goodbyes. You know, we learned from Paul when we at the lunch where park ranger was going to say something and he couldn't because he was too upset. And then Paul was the one who was saying some words, but they heard a crackle on, was it the radio? On the helicopter radio. To let them know that we were at the lodge, we walked into camp.

[00:33:57] - [Lynne]
I can't imagine the emotions up there. Even the kids said they didn't know if they should smile or were like, they they they... I mean, you know, we were gone.

[00:34:07] - [Rick]
And so I think it was my daughter who said something that I won't repeat about, can you ask them to say that again so we know exactly what's going on? And they repeated that we had walked into the lodge. So I'm... I I can't... I don't know that I've ever I think I have talked to her about it.

[00:34:28] - [Rick]
And so it was just a feeling of relief from their point of view and a feeling of like, okay, what happened? You know, wanting cancer to to why did it take a week or why, you know, on that day did we come out and how did we survive and all of the things we've been talking about that night. So this is on a Monday night. When were we sitting at the hotel with the kids? Sunday night, we On the Sunday night?

[00:34:57] - [Rick]
Sunday night. So we're sitting at the hotel. We're on an outside patio at the hotel. We're having a dinner altogether, and we're looking at the Cathedral Lake area. And there is a massive thunderstorm.

[00:35:12] - [Rick]
So if we had still been there, we would have been getting drenched with rain. They could not have been searching because there was thunder and lightning. Mhmm. And and we thought, oh, I'm kinda glad we walked out today because tomorrow wouldn't have been such a good day to do this. But in in getting altogether, there was just a lot of little, I don't know, connections and stuff that were made.

[00:35:35] - [Rick]
We found out that her son and my son-in-law knew each other from some military stuff. It was a really good kind of get together. I mean, we focus on... We try to focus on the positive.

[00:35:46] - [Nina]
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:35:48] - [Lynne]
We enjoyed hearing after coming out, enjoyed hearing that our family was extremely helpful. They were there for most of the week at the at the command center or wherever. And my brother was there too. And and just everybody worked so well together.

[00:36:06] - [Cassie]
The timing of everything is just incredible. Right? Like you say, the storm and your family members were out saying their goodbyes when you arrived. It's just Yeah. Really, I mean, there's no words to describe just how incredible that all is.

[00:36:21] - [Lynne]
Well, my son told us after that, figured that we were still alive. And so my son and Rick's son-in-law were talking about going and searching themselves and they just didn't want to give up.

[00:36:35] - [Cassie]
They had a gut feeling.

[00:36:37] - [Rick]
They did. Well, and a couple of military guys who've been in some rough spots and they figured, you know, let's see what we can do here if we have to.

[00:36:45] - [Lynne]
And I think the only question I asked both of my kids when we were at the hotel that night separately, and I said, is there something that you want to ask me? And my son just said, why did you wait so long to come back? And so to piecemeal it day by day, what we did, and by the end of it, it made sense that we couldn't go, we couldn't find our way back, we were lost. And so... But as time went on, you know, we kind of

[00:37:17] - [Rick]
Figured out where we Figured out where we had to go. Right? And they tell you in anything we've heard is stay where you are. We'll find you. That's what I

[00:37:25] - [Cassie]
was just gonna say. We just covered another survival story, and the only thing that search and rescue wish... Wishes would have been done differently was that she would have stayed put.

[00:37:34] - [Rick]
Yeah.

[00:37:35] - [Nina]
Yeah. But it is... I think it's everyone's natural instinct to try to find their way out.

[00:37:43] - [Lynne]
But I think, like, for our week, like, the first couple of days, we were both exhausted. Yeah. Yeah. Just because the terrain was so difficult. Well, then it was my toes.

[00:37:55] - [Lynne]
I... My toenail, one of my big toenail fell off.

[00:37:59] - [Rick]
Well, no. I pulled it off by mistake. Well, yes. She doesn't wanna talk about it because because it was my fault, but I was rushing to get out of the nest and my foot... My shoe caught her big toenail and almost pulled it completely off.

[00:38:15] - [Nina]
Oh, ouch.

[00:38:17] - [Rick]
Yeah. You can feel that right now. I know.

[00:38:19] - [Nina]
Yes. Yeah.

[00:38:20] - [Lynne]
But I think like when you... We we were taking turns with our shoes on and shoes off because if your feet are inside your shoes all the time, they get sweaty and then they... And then you can run into difficulty. And we had been in some water too. And so you need to keep your feet dry.

[00:38:37] - [Lynne]
And so it was my turn with my shoes off, but when... Like Rick said, when he jumped up, he hit my toenail. And so I had to look after that. So I couldn't go anywhere for a couple of days anyway. I couldn't put my shoe back on.

[00:38:52] - [Nina]
Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah.

[00:38:54] - [Lynne]
But... So I had to look after that.

[00:38:58] - [Nina]
What advice would you give to others who might find themselves in a similar situation?

[00:39:05] - [Lynne]
I can... I... I've been thinking about that while we always talk about when we have our lost story. But at the end of that first day when we were lost, I mean, we made, we knew we made some bad decisions. We left the lodge.

[00:39:19] - [Lynne]
We had no matches, no flashlight, no compass. We had nothing that you should have. You should go anytime you go out on a hike, you should be prepared

[00:39:32] - [Rick]
In the backcountry for sure.

[00:39:34] - [Nina]
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:39:34] - [Lynne]
With those things. And we had... We did not have those things.

[00:39:39] - [Nina]
If it's a even if it's a day hike, a short hike, you should have

[00:39:42] - [Rick]
those Yeah. I think, you know, I mean, if if you're on a marked trail in a provincial park that's a kilometer long and you're going in a circle around the lake, that's one thing. But it... When... Once you get up into the mountains, it gets pretty unpredictable.

[00:39:56] - [Rick]
The amount of weight it takes to throw in a couple of these things, it's well worth it.

[00:40:02] - [Nina]
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:03] - [Lynne]
And stay on the trail.

[00:40:04] - [Rick]
Yep. Stay on the trail. You know, I... There was another... Just again to mention something.

[00:40:10] - [Rick]
There was a a lady who went on a... Who... Very experienced hiker. Senior woman, like she was in her sixties at the time, the summer I was cooking up at Cathedral Lakes, and some cloud and fog rolled in, and she couldn't see where she was going. She laid down on the trail with whatever she had to keep warm and slept there until the next morning when she could see and she walked back to camp and she came in and she did the right thing.

[00:40:39] - [Rick]
I mean, she stayed right on the trail. There's things to learn from other people, but for sure we would go with safety equipment. Yeah. And also we told them where we were going. Yeah.

[00:40:50] - [Lynne]
We went further and we shouldn't done that either. We've learned things from all of that.

[00:40:59] - [Cassie]
The experience that you had, what role, if any, does it play in your lives today and in your relationship?

[00:41:06] - [Rick]
Well, people, you know, at the time said, you know, are you guys still together? Because kind of experiences can kind of make or break a relationship. Yeah. And I think in our case, it made it. It it it, you know, it helped kind of bring us even closer together because we worked through it.

[00:41:25] - [Rick]
I mean, whenever you work through something difficult, I think it kind of just makes you stronger. From my point of view, I think I'd say that to get knocked down, just dust yourself off and get back up and try and be stronger than you were before.

[00:41:39] - [Lynne]
And I think to anybody who knew that we were lost, I mean, it's been since it's eleven years. Yeah. Yeah. Even anybody who has any questions always enjoy telling that story and everybody has different questions. And it tells you how how it affected them too.

[00:42:02] - [Lynne]
So we don't mind telling that story anytime.

[00:42:05] - [Rick]
Yeah, we never make light of somebody's concern.

[00:42:07] - [Lynne]
Nope. So that was the Pembroke Court Office. There were yellow ribbons around all the trees in front of the court office and Wow. And at my home. And Yeah.

[00:42:19] - [Lynne]
Anybody who had questions after that, it... You you really do have to just answer them because it affected a lot of people in different ways.

[00:42:28] - [Nina]
Yeah.

[00:42:30] - [Rick]
Not just us. But we still like to go on adventures. We do.

[00:42:33] - [Nina]
Good. I'm... I... You know, I'm I'm glad that hasn't stopped you from going on adventures.

[00:42:39] - [Lynne]
But we're more prepared now when we do.

[00:42:41] - [Nina]
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:42:43] - [Cassie]
Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

[00:42:46] - [Rick]
Well, I can tell you that two days later was July 1 after this adventure we just finished talking about. We were in British Columbia at Crowsnest Pass. Mhmm. And we decided the next day was July 1. We were gonna drive through as many provinces as we could, and we made it to Winnipeg.

[00:43:06] - [Nina]
Wow.

[00:43:07] - [Rick]
And so we finally quit about 07:00 at night after starting around six in the morning, and that was our next adventure. We we kinda put the one you were talking about right now behind us and moved them. Yeah. Do you have anything else?

[00:43:21] - [Lynne]
No. I don't I don't think so. I think I think... I mean, it's always a story that's going to be there for us. I mean, it gets overwhelming sometimes when we start talking about different parts of it and it's still for me anyway.

[00:43:35] - [Lynne]
Yeah. We were just very, very lucky.

[00:43:38] - [Rick]
Yes. We were. Very lucky.

[00:43:40] - [Cassie]
Rick and Lynne, thank you so much for joining us and for sharing your story. It is so powerful for our audience to hear about what happened to you and how you survived. You two stayed calm. You thought creatively, and you worked together so beautifully. We really appreciate your time today.

[00:43:56] - [Rick]
Thank you.

[00:43:57] - [Lynne]
Thanks for having us.

[00:43:59] - [Nina]
Thank you for joining us today. New episodes are out every Tuesday. You can reach out to us at info@mishapsandmysteries.ca. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, and leave us a rating and a review. It really helps new people find us.

[00:44:16] - [Nina]
Also, share with your friends. Be safe and never stop exploring.