ICE OF NORTH AMO WEST

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News 985-2131 Classified 986-6222

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HE WENT out on a nice day, intending to ‘‘vo for a stroll” in the mountains. Ten days later David Wayne Deveau, 32, crawled from the bush in the darkness, delirious and more

dead than alive.

A self-described loner, he had been missed by no one and nobody was aware he had even gone up the mountain Feb. 27.

That he survived 10 days in the wintry Mount Seymour wilderness without food, clad only in a jogg- ing suit, runners and socks has been termed amazing. His survival is the longest on record for any such ordeal on the local moun- tains.

When he was found crumpled and wasted at the doorstep of Deep Cove resident Jim Drumheller early Tuesday morn-

By MICHAEL BECKER News Reporter

ing, Deveau was a dehydrated, emaciated, frostbitten wreck of a man.

“1 figured I was pretty gone,”’ Deveau remembered from his LGH hospital bed Wednesday. “By that time I was on the verge of death and absolutely, totally exhausted.””

Inspired by the good weather on that Saturday in February, and the desire to do something different, Deveau, an unemployed former

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naval reserves man from Halifax, Nova Scotia, now living in Van- couver, packed a bag of oranges, bread and bananas and watked from Vancouver to Deep Cove and up into the wilderness.

He built a lean-to somewhere below the snow line, went for a hike with his food left behind and quickly got lost.

“T knew | had eight days before ('d die of starvation. [ kept trying to find my kit, | kept counting the days. By the cighth day I began to crawl out,’’ he said.

Deveau, who says he's been a ci- ty boy all his fife, said he drank water from streams to keep his stomach from collapsing and tried to eat ferns. He followed streams downhill in his desperate bid to scramble back to civilization.

But he said, ‘'There were more than T thought there were. bustead of going in a straight line, 1 kept going in mad circles.”

Deveau said he stopped feeling hungry by the sixth day. He began tricking himself into believing he

vas eating. “I'd be sitting under a log and my mouth would be mov- ing and I'd be thinking about piz- za, bacon and eggs — everything. It's a good way to survive actual- ly."

His first meal at the hospital was soup end tea. Deveau’s doctor, fan Strang, treated his patient to a much-appreciated smoked oyster and back-bacon pizza Wednesday.

Said Strang: ‘“lt’s amazing he survived 10 days. His core body

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HIKER David Deveau...‘‘l knew 1 had eight days before Vd die of starvation."'