Sea to Sky locals save wildlife from frozen fate

If you ever saw wildlife in trouble, would you go out of your way to help it? That is the question Lillooet locals Russell Adams and Kyle Brickell had to ask themselves during their commute to work on an unseasonably cold day last week. 

On Feb. 22, the two Squamish-born, Lillooet-based contractors were heading to work in the rapidly growing Bridge River Region, 80 kilometres north of Pemberton. Driving past the Downton Lake Reservoir, they noticed three deer on the ice adjacent to the BC Hydro Lajoie Dam. 

Seeing wildlife in this part of the province isn’t a rarity, and they heeded the deer little attention. However, when they came through the next day, they noticed the animals hadn’t moved an inch. They quickly grew concerned for the deers' well-being in the -20 C conditions. 

According to Adams, once they saw the animals were still there on the second day, they decided to help them find their footing and get them off the ice. First, they went to their job site and grabbed as much rope as they could find to rappel down the steep reservoir embankment. 

“There were three. So there was a mom and two babies. The first one was actually stuck to the ice, and I think it was there overnight. But yeah, it was crazy. You've got to save them. What are you going to do?” Adams said. 

With a hastily fashioned rope harness and ice grips on his shoes, Adams made his way down to the artificially flooded, ice-covered valley floor with Brickell working as an anchor at the top of the hill. 

When Adams got to the bottom of the reservoir, it was clear the animals were in trouble. The mother doe was laid out on her stomach, with all four legs sprawled out, and one of the fawns frozen to the ice. 

“The first fawn, she was stuck to the ice, so I had to pull her off the ice and get her back up,” Adams said. “The mom was tough as well, and the hardest one to get up. The other one kept running away, like kind of getting away from us, but we managed to get that one as well.” 

After almost two hours and a fair bit of patience, they got the family of deer to safety, although Adams had to carry one of the fawns by hand up the steep embankment. 

Once off the frozen reservoir, the mother doe and one of her fawns returned to the forest to live another day, while the one stuck to the ice was too weak to run off. They draped the exhausted fawn in a jacket and wool blanket and let people in the local community know to keep an eye on the animal. Unfortunately, the fawn succumbed to exposure when they returned from work later that day. 

However, thanks to their efforts, the mother deer and one of her fawns survived, a rescue coming in the nick of time, as the three deer would likely have all perished on the ice if it wasn’t for their heroic deed.