Every year, Whistler Search and Rescue (WSAR) goes looking for the wreckage of a legendary 1956 plane crash in the Callaghan Valley—in which two Royal Canadian Air Force officers mysteriously vanished without a trace, other than a few spare airplane parts recovered over the years.
“We’ll often salt the search area with discs—I’ll go and just throw out a bunch of discs, and then we can tell how successful we are by how many discs get returned,” said WSAR president Brad Sills.
“And quite often, only two thirds of the discs come back.”
Which just goes to show: even highly-trained professionals, searching a defined area, won’t catch everything.
The search for Whistler senior Robert McKean, who went missing with his dog the morning of Oct. 9, consisted of more than 300 search-and-rescue members (from 21 different teams around the province), with help from police, firefighters, and civilians.
On Sunday, Oct. 15 at 1 p.m., after nearly a week of intensive searching, the mass effort was suspended “pending further investigation,” the RCMP said.
As of Oct. 16, officials were no closer to finding the 80-year-old McKean, who has dementia, than when they started.
“The search will continue,” Sills said. “We will continue following up on leads, we’ll do some more aerial flying in the coming weeks, and yeah, police will continue to follow up on any of the tips that they get.”
A COMMUNITY EFFORT
Searchers began Monday morning by containing the area, sending e-bikes down the trail system in Alpine and as far south as Function hoping to pick up McKean and his dog, Lexi.
At the same time, RCMP were going door to door in Alpine seeking doorbell camera footage, eventually getting lucky with a security camera situated at a construction site on Alpine Way.
“We picked him up there, at 10:17 on Monday morning, and he’s taking his dog and he looks quite determined,” Sills said. “So that gave us the point last seen and a direction of travel.”
Those with dementia typically travel in a straight line, and are “easily thwarted by obstructions,” Sills said, noting the last two instances in Whistler where a person with dementia went missing, they were both found up against trees unable to get around them.
Searchers initially focused their efforts on Alpine Meadows and the nearby Emerald Forest towards the Catholic Church, where McKean is part of the weekly Making Connections dementia social group.
“He voiced to his wife first thing that morning, ‘well I have my workshop today,’ and she said, ‘no, that’s on Wednesday,’—so we thought perhaps he’d be over in that area,” Sills said.
“And we did a quick search through there, and there was nothing.”
Thermal imaging via an infrared-camera-equipped drone courtesy of the Garibaldi Volunteer Fire Department was thwarted by inclement weather, and crews packed it in at about 10 p.m. that first night.
By Tuesday, they had backup from both Squamish and Pemberton search and rescue, as well as local fire crews—and the numbers only swelled from there.
South Fraser Search and Rescue, which serves Surrey, Delta, Richmond and White Rock, lent some sophisticated software to help manage the logistics of the growing expedition, which by Saturday was about as big as it could get.
According to police, in addition to the SAR volunteers and civilian search dog teams, RCMP police and drone teams, Whistler Fire Rescue Services, Garibaldi Fire, and numerous community members also assisted in the search, which included aerial sweeps via helicopter, accessing steep terrain with rope teams, and going door-to-door in relevant neighbourhoods.
“At some point, you’ve collected enough data in each of the areas that you’re realizing that continued effort using the same methods, unless the environmental conditions change, likely isn’t going to yield you any significant difference,” Sills said.
“So typically that’s when you make the decision to scale back.”
THE SEARCH CONTINUES
Now, searchers will wait for the foliage to fall off the trees, and hope the changing seasonal conditions will turn up some sign of the missing subject.
But after a week with no leads, what they’re looking for now is closure.
“It’s just horrible. It really is, and you really, really, really want to bring closure,” Sills said.
“After the first couple of days you go, ‘Well, you know, he’s 80 years old, 130 pounds, he’s lightly dressed, and it’s been pouring rain and it’s cold. The survivability rate… you have to be realistic.”
It’s not the first time someone has vanished without a trace in Whistler—in search-and-rescue terms referred to simply as a “disappearance.”
“This is now the fourth case in Whistler in the almost 50 years I’ve been here of people that quite literally, they just disappear,” Sills said. “We never find anything, not even a clue—they just… evaporate.”
There’s the cases of Jonathan Jetté and Rachael Bagnall, who disappeared in the Pemberton backcountry on a romantic getaway in September 2010, never to be seen again, and hiker Tyler Wright, who went missing that same year near Squamish.
Sills recalled another hiker who disappeared on Rainbow in the mid-2000s, and a staff member at Whistler Secondary who went missing—though in that case, the subject’s remains were eventually found, providing some closure.
“It’s frustrating as anything, but I don’t hang myself up on it anymore,” Sills said. “Because it’s just the way it is. Mother Nature has a lot of tricks, and we haven’t detected all of them yet.”
The RCMP has been in close contact with McKean’s family, “who wanted to express their gratitude to all involved in the search including all of the SAR members from across the province, Whistler Fire Rescue Service, Garibaldi Fire, and all of the community members who have searched and recorded their tracks in the effort to locate Mr. McKean and his dog, Lexi,” police said in a release Oct. 15.
The RCMP is still seeking any witnesses who may have seen McKean and Lexi on Monday, Oct. 9, and is asking the public to remain vigilant for any signs or clues.
He was wearing: medium blue size 7 New Balance running shoes; blue jeans; a green rain jacket over a blue Canucks jersey; and a tan ballcap with a blue brim.
He was walking his dog Lexi on a blue and white checkered leash attached to a blue harness.
“Whistler RCMP will continue to investigate this matter vigorously and additional search efforts are planned in an effort to locate Robert,” the release said.
Anyone with any information about McKean’s whereabouts is asked to contact the Sea to Sky Whistler RCMP detachment at (604) 932-3044 or Crimestoppers at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS) or solvecrime.ca.
