Photo: COSAR

Central Okanagan Search and Rescue was called out the Lambly Lake area near West Kelowna to bring six motorists to safety early on the morning of Jan. 21, 2025.

It sounds like a line out of Corb Lund’s ‘The Truck Got Stuck’.

Central Okanagan Search and Rescue was called out in the middle of the night to rescue some motorists stuck along a forest service road in the hills above West Kelowna.

The call came from the Lambly Lake area around midnight Tuesday. Six motorists were stranded in three vehicles on an extremely icy Bear Creek Main Forest Service Road.

A woman driver called her boyfriend for help. He got stuck and then a third person who tried to help also ended up stranded.

“The key thing that we’ve got to get out there is that the weather conditions up in the hills are drastically different than what we’re experiencing down in the valley,” said search manager Brian Stainsby.

“They were 23 kilometres in and, basically, after four kilometres down this forest service road, the whole road turns to ice because there’s been this freeze-thaw cycle. There’s some active logging up there and there’s lots of areas that haven’t been plowed or graded.”

The stranded drivers called the RCMP who turned to COSAR. A crew of seven was able to access the area and transported the motorists to safety.

Photo: COSAR

“We had a couple of members with their own 4x4s and we also had a backup team with our tracked UTV. As it turned out, with chains on properly equipped 4x4 vehicles, we were able to get into where they were located,” said Stainsby.

He adds that everyone was home in bed by 4 a.m.

While COSAR has been involved in a couple of mutual aid calls this month, this was the first official rescue operation of 2025.

Last year was the second busiest year on record for COSAR. They completed 91 search and rescue tasks across the region in 2024.

Photo: COSAR

The underside of one of the stranded vehicles.