Two people were killed and three seriously injured in a massive rockfall that struck numerous hikers near Bow Glacier Falls in Banff National Park on Thursday and, after an overnight search, Parks Canada officials said Friday they are confident no one else is buried in the debris.
A 70-year-old Calgary woman was found dead at the scene on Thursday and RCMP said a second body was recovered on Friday morning.
The second deceased person was actually located by a search-and-rescue dog team on Thursday afternoon, Parks Canada later said.
“However due to instability and continued hazard, Parks Canada was unable to safely recover the deceased that evening,” said François Masse, the superintendent for Banff National Park’s Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay field unit.
Three people also suffered injuries serious enough to require transport to hospital. Two were flown to hospital via STARS helicopters and one was transported by ground ambulance on Thursday. All three were listed in stable condition as of Friday.
Masse said Parks Canada teams were joined by members of Canada Task Force Two (CAN-TF2 Calgary), a national disaster response team, at 5 a.m. Friday. Using infrared-sensing drones, with support from the Calgary Police Service, and thermal imaging cameras they found “no indication of human presence” in the debris.
There were “no additional persons reported missing and no additional unidentified vehicles at the trailhead located at Bow Lake,” Parks Canada also said in a release.
The woman who was found dead on Thursday was identified as Jutta Hinrichs, an occupational therapist who also co-ordinated clinical education at the University of Alberta until her retirement last July.
In a written statement, the university described Hinrichs as a “dedicated leader and educator.”
“She was integral to developing a southern Alberta satellite for the department, growing it from the seeds of her deep clinical and leadership experience in the Calgary area. As an educator, Jutta nurtured many students, preceptors and clinicians to flourish and grow. That her work continues to enrich the tapestry of occupational therapy in Alberta is her legacy.”
RCMP Cpl. Gina Slaney said police are holding off on releasing information about the other person who died, as they were having difficulty contacting the person’s family.
The incident was initially reported to police at about 1:30 p.m. on Thursday when Lake Louise RCMP were notified that “multiple hikers” were caught in a rockfall near Bow Glacier Falls.
Parks Canada, the Lake Louise fire department, STARS Air Ambulance, the RCMP and EMS responded to the scene.
According to STARS, two helicopters were dispatched — STAR-1 from Calgary and STAR-3 from Edmonton — and transported one patient each to Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary.
“It was such a relief to see those helicopters flying in,” said Elly Jackson, who was hiking solo in the area with her dogs, Juniper and Oxford, when the rockfall happened.
She narrowly escaped with minor injuries.
She had been chatting with a group of women who had stopped for lunch below the cliffs beside Bow Glacier Falls and was just about to start hiking back down, when the rock gave way.
‘It looked like a multi-storey building’
Jackson said she had her back to the cliffs but heard a “cracking sound” and when she looked over her shoulder and saw the size of the rock that had released from the cliff above, she thought she she was going to die.
“It looked like a multi-storey building — a huge slab of rock,” she said. “And I just saw it dropping and I think my instant thought was, ‘I can’t survive that.'”
“So, without hesitation, I just turned and grabbed my open backpack by the fabric — I had my camera in my hand and my dogs — and I just ran as fast as I could away from it downhill, as fast as my legs would carry me, which wasn’t fast enough because I fell,” Jackson recounted.
“I got back up, kept running, dropped my bag, and just started dropping stuff and I was thinking of just letting go of the leashes and hoping that my dogs could escape and that we would be OK.”
Calgary Eyeopener9:29Bow Glacier Falls rockslide witness shares their story
In this segment: One person is dead and a number are injured after a rockfall yesterday at Bow Glacier Falls in Banff National Park. Elly Jackson was there at the time of the incident and was helicoptered out safely. She joins us to share her experience.
One rock hit her in the back of the arm, but did minimal damage. She kept running, peeking back at the dust cloud forming behind her, unsure if any more rocks would fly out from the grey haze.
“When I got a far enough away, to a safe distance, I stopped and actually snapped a couple pictures because I still had my camera in my hand somehow,” she said.
“Once everything settled and the rocks weren’t really rolling anymore, I could hear people screaming and yelling and I just ran back and tried to start helping people.”
Jackson and others in the area, all strangers to her, teamed up and spent more than an hour tending to the most severely injured people, before the first helicopter arrived.
Two people are now confirmed dead in a massive rockfall that struck numerous hikers near Bow Glacier Falls in Banff National Park on Thursday. A 70-year-old Calgary woman was found dead at the scene on Thursday, and RCMP say a second deceased person was recovered on Friday morning.
Their first task, she said, was triaging the injured and trying to move them as far from the cliffs as possible.
“People were just in shock,” Jackson said. “So I said, ‘You have to get out of here. We have to move downslope, away from the rockfall, because this could happen again.'”
They managed to get three people away from the cliffs and wrapped them in emergency blankets to keep them warm while they waited for trained emergency responders to arrive.
She said the wait was “agonizing,” as there was little more they could do to help the wounded.
“I just was going from person to person just to check to see how they were doing and somebody always had somebody with them, talking to them and trying to comfort them,” Jackson said.
“Then there were a few people walking around and I think just the shock was starting to set in. I could tell some people were blaming themselves and just not dealing with it too well.”
‘Neither preventable nor predictable’
Masse said rockfall is common in the Rocky Mountains but usually involves much smaller releases.
“Geotechnical assessments indicate that this tragic rockfall was the result of a natural process common in mountain areas. Sadly, this extremely rare event appears to have been neither preventable nor predictable,” he said.
“What was exceptional in this case was the size of the slab that detached.”
Bow Glacier Falls is located about three kilometres to the southwest of Bow Lake and is accessible via a popular hiking trail.
It is also along the route to Bow Hut, a large backcountry shelter operated by the Alpine Club of Canada.
Parks Canada said Bow Lake and the trail to Bow Hut had reopened as of Friday morning, but Bow Glacier Falls remains closed to all visitors.
Masse said the area around the falls will remain closed “for the foreseeable future, because we understand that there is remaining instability in the rock face there.”
Thursday’s incident was at least the second time in the past two years where significant rockfall has occurred near Bow Glacier Falls while hikers were present.
In August 2023, a section of rock also fell from the cliffs near the falls. Several people “suffered cuts and bruises” but “much of the debris was stopped by a ledge,” according to a Calgary Herald report from the time.
One tourist also needed to be airlifted out, the newspaper reported, after injuring her hand and elbow while running to escape the rockfall.
