Nearly 48 hours after their tent was washed away at high tide, leaving them stranded on a rocky outcrop near Ucluelet’s Virgin Falls without food, water, warm clothes or the ability to call for help, Alishia Adams and Brandon Bailey were starting to give up hope of ever being rescued.
But looking across the inky black water separating them from their pickup and their dogs, Adams saw the sweep of a flashlight and began to call out.
After hours spent searching the remote logging roads that snake through the Ucluelet area, rescuers crossed the Kennedy River bridge and spotted a pickup. They opened the door, then followed a frantic Doberman-shepherd cross toward the water line.
It would take another few hours for search and rescue volunteers to get a boat across the water to retrieve the Parksville pair, but at least they knew they were safe. “For them to find us in the pitch black on the other side was amazing,” Adams told the Times Colonist.
Adams, 21, and Bailey, 24, had gone out for an overnight camping trip near Virgin Falls on May 17. The pair set up camp about eight metres from the water line, not realizing they were too close to the low-tide mark.
In the middle of the night, as they slept, the tide came rushing in and swept their tent into the middle of the estuary.
“All of a sudden the water started pouring in,” Adams said.
They decided to jump out into the freezing water and tried to swim toward land.
Adams pulled the tent with her so they would have supplies, but let go when it threatened to pull her into the water. Minutes later, they found land, a small rocky outcropping bordered by a thick wall of trees on the other side of the 300-metre-wide river.
They took off their soaking-wet clothes, which they hoped would dry in the wind, and started pulling down branches to keep them warm.
In an act Adams described as “some crazy miracle,” a blanket given to Bailey by his late grandfather washed onto the rock, partially dry.
In the morning, the pair scavenged for moss to make a warmer bed on the rocks.
“That whole day we tried to think of any way to get back across,” Adams said.
They searched for logs and tried to tie them together in a raft using their clothes, but it wasn’t strong enough for both of them.
They called out for help whenever they heard vehicles in the distance, but no one heard them.
There were huckleberry bushes with no berries, so they tried to eat the leaves. They squeezed a few drops of liquid from the veins of fern trees. The plants left them dizzy and vomiting, and they spent another cold night on the rock.
By Tuesday morning, their co-workers in Parksville became worried when they didn’t show up to work. Adams’ mother contacted Oceanside RCMP.
Police checked their bank records and saw they had purchased gas in Ucluelet on May 17. Ucluelet RCMP dispatched a helicopter to scour the coastline. “But anywhere along the west coast, it’s like a canopy [of trees],” said detachment commander Sgt. Jeff Swann.
Adams said they could hear the helicopter hovering in the distance, which gave them hope.
By Tuesday evening, search and rescue volunteers from Parksville, Port Alberni, Ucluelet and Tofino were on the ground.
After volunteers communicated with the pair around 11:30 p.m., they decided they couldn’t delay the rescue until daybreak.
“They were justifiably panicked, cold, tired and hungry,” Swann said.
By 2:30 a.m., Adams and Bailey were back in Ucluelet, being checked by B.C. Ambulance paramedics. Adams, covered in bug bites, was taken to hospital as a precaution, where she was met by her parents and sister.
The two initially didn’t want Ucluelet RCMP to publicize their story, but Adams later agreed so she could express her gratitude to the police and search and rescue volunteers.
“When I found out exactly how long they had been searching, how much they went through, I was absolutely in shock,” Adams said. “I don’t even know how I’m going to thank them, for not giving up on us and searching through the dark. I don’t know if we would have made it through that night.”
