The day started out at Mabel Lake where the group of ten riders all met up on the groomed trail for a day trip up to hunters range. The ride up went as per usual with all sleds working fine and everyone with their safety gear on them. Once we arrived in the first meadow it was a bit socked in with fog so everyone stuck together and played around for about 2 hours. We spent time riding and a bit of time digging people out conditions were great with nice deep powder.

The group decided to move on in order to avoid the fog our group went in to a lower bowl south west of Mara lookout in the hopes to gain a bit of visibility. Once in the lower bowl our group preceded to play around for about an hour or so till we decided to take our lunch at 12:15. During lunch we noticed that our friend Darrell was not feeling well so we gave him some water and waited a bit to see if he would start to improve, after about 10 min he stated that he had chest pain and that he was starting to have a hard time breathing. One of our group member with a partner went to see if we could track down some aspirin as we had a hunch that he might be going through a heart attack. We made the call that it would not be safe to sled him out due to the fear that his condition could get worse.

We activated the ACR ResQLink and attempted to call 911 to see if the device was actually sending out our location. After a few phone call attempts David from 911 contacted us by text. He was able to let us know that he had our coordinates and search and rescue was dispatched. They were staging a ground team as well as helicopter due to the fog. In that time we were able to get some aspirin from another group of sledders. Darrell was getting cold so we wrapped him up in a thermal blanket and tried to keep him warm. The helicopter arrived at 3:15 and took Darrell to the hospital where he was treated. It turned out that it was a heart attack and we did the right thing.

After he was airlifted to the hospital we proceeded to double back with 3 people to get his sled out of the lower bowl back to the main trail head where we could tow the sled home.