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Hiker found after 12-hour search

Times Colonist5 June 2015p. A4JDF SAR era

Times Colonist, p. A4, 5 June 2015 ref-only

Summary

A hiker who became lost in forest near Port Renfrew was rescued after a massive 12-hour search. The 58-year-old man, from Greater Victoria, set out with a friend to find a hidden grotto near Sombrio Beach on the Tuesday. At about 11:45 a.m. the friend complained of a sore leg so he walked back to wait by their car while the 58-year-old ventured on, Sooke RCMP Cpl. Joe Holmes said. After three hours the 58-year-old still had not returned; with no cellphone coverage to call for help, his friend flagged down a car and the driver called police.

Written from the article text only. Where the scan is hard to read, the summary was taken from the page image rather than the OCR.

Details

Headline	“Hiker found after 12-hour search” Not recorded in the catalogue — read from the clipping image. Check it against the clipping below before quoting it.
Publication	Times Colonist
Date	5 June 2015
Page	A4
Era	JDF SAR era
Document type	news report
Source	ProQuest Digital Times Colonist via GVPL no external link recorded
Accessed	2026-07-16
Licensing	ref-only
Record confidence	probable

Archivist's note

One of the archive's clearest accounts of the communications problem on the western end of the response area - no cellphone coverage, an alarm raised by flagging down a passing car - which the team's later press coverage returns to repeatedly, including the 2022 Weber interview on cellular dependence indexed in the bulk export.

The clipping

Scan of Times Colonist, page A4, 5 June 2015 — the catalogued article — The article as printed.

Read the original online

No external link. No stable public link is recorded for this article. It was read from a page scan obtained through a library database. The full page scan is below.

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Archive notes

Shared page: the scan is a full newspaper page whose other content is unrelated. The summary describes only this article. The search and rescue team is not named in the passage legible here, so organizations lists only the RCMP; the file is held in the archive as a SAR article and the team's involvement is implied by the 12-hour search but is not asserted. OCR quality 0.94.

Record id 2015-06-05-times-colonist-pa4-search. Original file in the project archive: 02_articles/2015-06-05_times_colonist_pA4_search.pdf.

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5 June 2015A hiker who became lost in forest near Port Renfrew was rescued after a massive 12-hour search.