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Men go down cliff to save injured teen stuck in waterfall
Times Colonist14 July 2007p. 17Louise Dickson, Times Colonist staffJDF SAR era
Louise Dickson, Times Colonist staff. “Men go down cliff to save injured teen stuck in waterfall”, Times Colonist, p. 17, 14 July 2007 ref-only
Summary
Fifteen-year-old Alyssa Albany was swept over a waterfall at the Sooke Potholes on the Thursday while fooling around with friends on an air mattress, and was trapped for more than three hours on a foothold in the waterfall before emergency crews rappelled over the sheer cliffs to reach her. High above the canyon, with dozens of spectators watching, Sooke firefighter Matt Varney transferred her in a rescue cradle, safety clip by safety clip, from his harness to the harness of Bill Meikle, 68, search manager for the Juan de Fuca Ground Search and Rescue, halfway up the 40-metre cliff, after one of Varney's ropes jammed on a rocky outcropping. Using huge cedars as anchors, about 24 firefighters and search and rescue crews from Juan de Fuca and Metchosin hauled Meikle and Alyssa to safety; the teenager, who had a broken ankle and was shivering with cold, was carried to a waiting ambulance. It was the second rescue in five days from the same waterfall section upstream of Sooke Potholes Provincial Park, and Meikle said the area is legally out of bounds, with danger signs, a fence and a locked gate.
Details
| Headline | “Men go down cliff to save injured teen stuck in waterfall” |
|---|---|
| Publication | Times Colonist |
| Date | 14 July 2007 |
| Page | 17 |
| Section | Dramatic Rescue at Sooke Potholes |
| Byline | Louise Dickson, Times Colonist staff |
| Era | JDF SAR era |
| Document type | news report |
| Source | ProQuest Times Colonist archive (BC ELN) |
| Accessed | 2026-07-15 |
| Licensing | ref-only |
| Record confidence | confirmed |
Archivist's note
The article records a prior incident that is not otherwise documented in this archive: "Last Saturday, a woman slipped over the lower falls and injured her back and leg. She was carried out on a stretcher on a steep path." That would be roughly 2007-07-07. No article covering it is held and no entry exists in INCIDENT_INDEX.csv; as an editorial decision recorded 2026-07-30, it is noted here as a mention only and is not carried as an open research lead. The same paragraph places both rescues upstream from Sooke Potholes Provincial Park at a former development site known as Deertrail. See also the 1968-04-14 cliff-fall fatality on the same stretch of the Sooke River canyon. ON THE "BUMBLEBEE" SLING (conflicts.md C-11): INCIDENT_INDEX.csv and MASTER_TIMELINE.csv both say Bill Meikle was lowered with a "Bumblebee" sling. That word does not appear in this article, which describes "a rescue cradle" and "a personal floatation device and a rescue cradle". The term is traceable through the project's own files to 00_admin/RESEARCH_PLAN.md and from there to the Drive timeline spreadsheet, which MASTER_TIMELINE.csv attributes to "Sooke Mirror, Glynis" - a named person, so the interview-exclusion rule keeps it out unless a document supports it. Searched for and not found: the Sooke News Mirror's own online archive begins in 2011 (see 02_articles/2026-07-15_sooke_news_mirror_search_index.md, "archive floor 2011"), so the July 2007 issue exists only in print or on microfilm. The equipment used is documented here as a rescue cradle; only the name "Bumblebee" is unsupported.
The clipping
