Rescue crews make discovery

Photo: CTV

North Shore Rescue found a backpack with two cameras believed to have been lost in the mid-90s. (Moffat Photography)

The search for missing student Liang Jin last month was tragically unsuccessful, but crews did make a remarkable discovery that’s revived a rescue dating back 20 years.

While scouring the mountains for Jin in January, North Shore Rescue stumbled onto a backpack embedded in the snow. They initially suspected it might belong to missing British tourist Tom Billings, who disappeared in late 2013, but soon realized it was much, much older.

Search manager Bruce Moffat told CTV Vancouver that the long-expired asthma medication inside the backpack provided a vital clue.

“The cartridges that were found, there were two of those that probably had an expiry of 1997,” Moffat said.

The backpack also contained two film cameras, which were given to the Vancouver Police Department’s forensics lab in hopes that some of the decades-old, never-before-seen images can be salvaged.

North Shore Rescue veterans suspect the cameras may have belonged to a couple who got lost on a hike to Rice Lake in the mid-90s.

“It was a tragic case,” Moffat said. “The husband was successfully rescued and the wife unfortunately passed due to exposure.”

The mysterious find has also highlighted the challenges of searching in the wild. Moffat said the backpack was located just a couple hundred metres from North Shore Rescue’s Hanes Valley helipad, the jumping off point for dozens of searches in recent years.

“When you’re looking for someone who’s unresponsive or you’re looking for an object in the bush like that, it can be three feet away and you might not see it because it’s behind some foliage or under some snow,” he said.

“Just glad on that pass they did find it.”