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December 23, 1992 48 pages

Survivor helps searchers, but hope fades for man lost in Cypress Bow]

THE SEARCH continued on Tuesday for an

bounds skier caught in an

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Deep Cove artist
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NEWS photo Cindy

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out-of-
avalanche on Saturday at

Cypress Bow! in West Vancouver.

On Monday afternoon Earl
Gregory Kurz, 31, of Coquitlam
was found by a North Vancou
man who was cross-country skiing
at Cypress. Still missing is William
Eugene Leboe, 34, of Westbank.

Kurz and Leboe were reported
missing on Sunday morning. The
pair went skiing at Cypress on
Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, the chances of fin-
ding Leboe in good condition
diminish daily.

Said North and West Vancouver
Emergency Program coordinator
Ross Peterson on Tuesday, ‘‘His-
tory says that people buried by

By Michael Becker
News Reporter

avalanches have a very low sur-
vival rate.

“He could have been thrown
clear or he could be in a tree-well.
There are still areas to search like
that, but of course as every day
goes by his chances become less
and less.’’

Members of the North Shore
Rescue Team, Lions Bay and Co-
quitlam search and rescue teams
returned to the mountain with

Kurz ia an attempt to Jocate the
area where the skier last saw his
missing skiing partner.

Said Peterson, ‘He (Kurz) did a
low of wandering. [t's still a very
vig area, so we're anxious to pin-
point it.

Peterson talked to Kurz on
Monday at Lions Gate Hospital,
where the skier was transported
for assessment. .

“He was not very coherent. He
was extremely tired. He did tell
us, though, approximately what
he had done — that was simply
that they were caught by an
avalanche.

“IT think he (Kurz) may have
been closer to the edge of the
uvalanche, but he did see his
partner get swept down further,

and he spent a day and a half, |
suppose, searching for his partner,

“In his wanderings he worked
his way back up the slope again to
the point where he was found,”
he said.

The skiers were caught
area the search team calls
Australian Gully.

About four years ago searchers
tracked an Australian skier lost in
the gully.

Said Peterson, ‘“‘It is an area
that is quite inviting to out-of-
bounds skiers. They get trapped in
these gullies and continue their
way down.”’

North Shore Rescue Team
member Tim Jones said Kurz was
in remarkably good condition fol-
lowing his ordeal on the moun-

in an
the

area

tain.

“*He was very dehydrated, quite
exhausted, but he was mentally
alert. He was surprisingly mildly
hypothermic.

“He definitely was in good
physical shape and probably took
some measures to protect himself
from hypothermia a¢ that time,”’
he said.

Friends of Kurz, Michael Jones
and another man, helped in the
search for Kurz and Leboe on
Monday.

Said Michael Jones, ‘‘The other
fellow I was with skis with this
fellow (Kurz) quite a bit, and they
do particular runs and do a par-
ticular route all the time, but they
obviously weren’t in that area.

See Conditions page 2