B.C. man recovering after shattering pelvis in backcountry

NORTH VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — A man is still recovering after he shattered his pelvis in B.C.’s backcountry last month.

Kevin Aitken, who is a search and rescue member, says he was skiing with some friends in the Lillooet area when the unthinkable happened on his first run of the day.

“I started to ski down a little roll there and just a little snow slab started to break out and as I was going down there it uncovered a bunch of rocks unfortunately right in the line of where I was going down there so I just piled into the rock and that’s about all I remember,” Aitken recounted.

He waited with his friends for four hours in the snow. Fortunately, multiple members skiing in the group were also search and rescue members — one even a doctor. They knew what to do and had the tools to do it.

Aitken says his friends worked quickly to stop the bleeding.

“I had a pretty bad bleed, I lost a lot of blood there and yeah just slowing that down and keeping me warm,” he told CityNews Vancouver.

He was airlifted to hospital and underwent six hours of surgery on his pelvis. He spent 10 days in care and is now recovering at home. Despite the horrific incident, he believes things could’ve ended much worse.

“I normally ski with smaller groups and if this would have happened in that case it would have been a totally different outcome,” Aitken said.

Sandra Riches with BC AdventureSmart says preparation is key when going into the great outdoors.

“What they did in that situation based on their group dynamics, based on their experience in that group their preparation and planning. Their training a lot happened for all of them well before that incident happened, what happened there at the time is they were able to assess, mitigate risk and reduce the severity of that rescue call.”

Riches adds, calls for help have significantly increased during the pandemic due to the number of people exploring what B.C. has to offer.

Do your research. I think that’s a really big thing that’s missing and when we plan trips. It takes time, and you need to understanding the difficulty of the trail based on your abilities.

As for Aitken, he says it will take about 9 months until he is fully recovered and hopes sharing his story will remind others to be prepared.

“I just want people to look around and see who they’re with in the backcountry and just know they could be their lifeline. If you’re not prepared, well you better be prepared for the worst,” he says.

For planning resources you can visit adventuresmart.ca.