Snow bikers spend night in the cold after Kelowna rescue workers had to hunt for them

It took 12 hours to rescue three snow bikers in the Greystokes area east of Kelowna after they kept moving deeper into a ravine.

“When you send a distress signal with your coordinates, please stay at those coordinates,” Central Okanagan Search and Rescue search manager Duane Tresnich said in a news release.

The ordeal started at 6 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 7 when Kelowna RCMP got an SOS message that a snow biker had ridden into a ravine and got stuck.

When rescuers got to the site of the call they found that three snow bikers had been trapped in the ravine.

“While searchers had the coordinates of the first SOS call, once members arrived it turned out the subjects had moved,” the news release says. “The search was then further made complicated as the subjects were actually moving further into the ravine trying to find a way out but getting into more difficult terrain making the search teams literally chase them for hours.”

Ten COSAR members and three Kelowna Snowmobile Club members conducted the search and rescue.

Because of the deep snow and location of the ravine it took several hours for the search team to catch up with the bikers, give them snowshoes and help them out of the ravine.

They were unhurt but cold when they got back to the staging area at 6 a.m.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Rob Munro or call 250-808-0143 or email the editor. You can also submitphotos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above.