A climber stuck on a ledge the width of a dinner plate, 250 feet up a granite wall in the dark — and the thing that saved him wasn't a helicopter or a rope team. It was two drones.
The rescue unfolded after 10 p.m. on September 10 on the Stawamus Chief in Squamish, British Columbia, one of the largest granite monoliths on the planet and a magnet for trad and face climbers. The man had been climbing a multi-pitch route called Alaska Highway with two partners, both of whom managed to downclimb safely. He ended up cliffed out: anchored in place on a ten-inch ledge, without enough rope to descend.
Squamish Search and Rescue decided a traditional rope operation or helicopter evacuation was too risky given the darkness, loose rock and scale of the wall. Instead, they called on their drone team, led by 36-year-old coordinator Dustin Wales, who said the squad had spent two years training and building protocols for exactly this kind of scenario — without yet having used them in a real callout.
The operation worked in stages. A first drone ferried a pilot line up to the climber, who used it to haul up a jacket and headlamp tied on by rescuers. Once he had light and warmth, the team used lasers and a rangefinder to measure the distance to the ground, then sent up a larger drone to hover and spotlight the wall. Finally, a smaller drone delivered a 300-foot pilot line attached to a thin but high-strength Dyneema climbing rope, spooled out between a ground operator and the aircraft. The climber caught the rope mid-air, tied it to his harness and an anchor, and rappelled to the ground. The ground crew, by Wales' account, cheered.
Drones are already a familiar tool in search and rescue — spotting lost hikers, dropping supplies, mapping huge areas of backcountry. What makes this case notable is the precision cargo delivery: getting usable climbing gear into the hands of someone dangling in a genuinely precarious spot. For a rescue team in a town that anchors one of North America's most popular climbing destinations, it was a proof of concept two years in the making.
Why should a traveller care? Squamish draws climbers, hikers and road-trippers from around the world, and the Chief looms right beside the Sea-to-Sky Highway. Knowing that local SAR has cutting-edge aerial capability — and that a stuck climber can be resupplied after dark — is reassuring context for anyone heading up the routes or trails in the area. It's also a reminder that even experienced climbers can end up stranded on big walls; carrying extra cord, a headlamp and the means to descend independently is not paranoia, it's basic planning.
For the rest of us, it's simply a great story out of one of Canada's most dramatic outdoor playgrounds — a modern rescue that swapped rotor wash for rotor precision, and got everyone home.