"We Would Have Gotten Hit if We Had Not Moved." Canmore Residents Escape Deadly Path of Banff National Park Rockfall
Cathy Ellis
Rocky Mountain Outlook
BANFF – Canmore’s Niclas Brundell saw the warning signs when car tire-sized boulders started falling from above Bow Glacier Falls, prompting he and his wife to leave just moments before a fatal rockslide descended on the popular hiking area.
The massive rockfall in Banff National Park on Thursday (June 19) left two people dead and sent three others to hospital with unknown injuries, but in stable condition. Police say they are notifying next of kin and no additional information is available at this time.
About 10 minutes before the deadly rockfall hit about 12:40 p.m., Brundell said he and his wife were about 20 meters to the right of the waterfall when they first heard and noticed large rocks falling from above the main waterfall.
“We would have gotten hit if we had not moved,” he said.
“It was nothing even close to the big one, but still a rock fall with tire-sized boulders, like a car tire, and it was very noticeable, and so we moved away, taking it as a bit of a warning sign,” he added.
“It was a pretty loud rockfall, pretty big rocks. Like, if they hit you from the distance, you would be dead if it hit you in the head.”
Brundell said the 15 to 20 other people in the immediate area seemed oblivious to the smaller rocks falling.
“It’s scary in hindsight, but we actually told each other that no one was paying attention,” he said.
“People were taking pictures in that direction and they didn’t even look like they were looking up or noticing anything.”’
Luckily, Brundell and his wife were already on the move away from the waterfall when the big rock slide came, which he describes as about 50 meters wide and 20 meters deep and approximately the “size of an apartment building.”
“I just heard a crack and all of a sudden just this whole piece of the wall came down. It looked just like a slab avalanche and it fell off the mountain and started crumbling and hitting the ground,” he said, adding he and his wife hit the ground running.
“I didn’t like our odds in that moment… but I kept yelling at my wife to just keep running as fast as we can and then we saw a big dust cloud behind and we were running and running and running downhill, sprinting as fast as we could for about 200 meters,” he added.
“The scary thing was the people under the waterfall kind of disappeared under the dust cloud.”
Brundell and his wife wanted to go back and help people still in the fall zone beneath the waterfall, but knew the area was likely still unstable and didn’t want to put pressure on rescue resources should something else happen.
“I wanted to go back in… there was so many people still in there and it felt like the risk of another rock slide was pretty big,” he said, noting his wife ran the few kilometers to the Lodge at Bow Lake to raise the alarm there.
“My wife actually told me after that she thought it was pointless to run because she thought the lake above the waterfall below the glacier was going to come down, that the whole mountain was falling away.”
At the first opportunity once he felt he and his wife were a safe distance away, Brundell used his satellite communication device to raise the alarm at about 12:50 p.m.
He said other people were also sending rescue calls via satellite communication devices.
“I wrote ‘massive rockfall. One person might be dead, send helicopter’. And I said ‘about 20 people were in the fall zone’ so that they understood that it was like a lot of people in that area, like people might be buried so they realize that it’s a search operation as well,” he said.
Other people had escaped the deadly rockfall, while others hiking up the trail still hadn’t arrived yet, Brundell said.
“Others had managed to run,” he said, noting he had met two people, who had also heard the earlier smaller rockfall and started moving away, but ended up with scratches on their legs from the rocks from the massive rockfall.
Brundell said other people had heard the rockslide from the Icefields Parkway and the lodge.
He said he saw a helicopter with park rescuers arrive at about 2:00 p.m.
Following the traumatic experience, and saddened by the deaths and injuries, Brundell is grateful he and his wife are fine and weren’t hit by rocks.
“It’s very surreal,” he said.
For now, he is counting his blessings.
“It’s both luck and it's also knowledge because we heard the previous rockfall and it made us start to move from the mountain and realize something was happening,” he said.
“The mountains give warnings and we just have to listen to them.”
RCMP say a 70-year-old Calgary woman died in the rockfall Thursday and a second person’s body was recovered on Friday morning.
STARS air ambulance dispatched two helicopters – one from Calgary and one from Edmonton. Two patients were flown to Calgary's Foothills Medical Centre. A third patient was taken to a hospital by ground ambulance.
“Parks Canada and RCMP extend our deepest condolences to the families and friends of the two individuals who lost their lives, our hearts are with them,” states a joint Parks Canada-RCMP news release on Friday.
“Our thoughts also remain with those in hospital and we hope for their full recovery.”
While national park law enforcement wardens and RCMP remained on scene overnight, the search stopped as darkness fell Thursday night but resumed at about 6:30 a.m. Friday.
Drones and search dogs were used to try to locate any missing people.
National park visitor safety specialists were working with support from Canada Task Force Two (CAN-TF2 Calgary), a national disaster response team, which came in to help on Friday morning.
CAN-TF2 was conducting infrared flights, through their partners in the Calgary Police Service, in a continued effort to complete a thorough assessment. A Canada Task Force One (CAN-TF1 Vancouver) geo-technical engineer is conducting a slope stability assessment.
Bow Lake remains closed to all visitors.