Two Climbers Were Stranded on a Big Wall. An iPhone Saved the Day.

On September 1, professional climbers Ines Papert and Emilie Pellerin set out to climb Crouching Tiger, a long, difficult multi-pitch route on British Columbia’s South Illusion Peak. After a fall caused Pellerin to break her ankle on September 2, the pair used the SOS function on their iPhone to trigger a rescue.

Papert, who is German, and Pellerin, who hails from Quebec, were keen to try their hand at the wall’s offerings, and had hiked in the previous day. Papert realized she’d forgotten her Garmin satellite communicator, but the pair decided to press on anyway, taking extra care to avoid an accident. “We felt pretty close to civilization,” she said, “so we just told ourselves not to do anything stupid.” But Papert and Pellerin had difficulty finding the base of the route in the dark.

“We probably opened a new route, in heavy packs and running shoes, on these wet slabs just finding the start [of Crouching Tiger],” Papert recalled, laughing. In a brief account she shared with Climbing, Pellerin added, “I call it The Moon-Walk, first climbed with a 40 or 50-pound backpack and a 6mm hyper static rope tied around our waists.”

The pair arrived below Crouching Tiger at 2:00 A.M., slept until 9:00 A.M., and then began the climb. On September 1, they led and fixed four pitches, sleeping at the base of the wall that night and climbing the rope to tackle the second half of the 11-pitch line the next day, September 2.

The pair swapped leads with Pellerin tackling the harder terrain, both leading and following with no falls. “Em was climbing every single pitch on sight,” Papert said. “I was so impressed. I’ve never seen someone climbing so well in such difficult terrain.” The hardest pitches of Crouching Tiger were in the bag at this point, but the women had three easier pitches left, the finish shared with the route next door.

Around 6:30 P.M. Pellerin began leading up the ninth pitch, which begins with the climber moving up a corner before turning left into a face with tricky protection and technical movement. “Em left this dihedral and into the face, and had a lot of trouble finding the right gear,” Papert said. “It took her 15 minutes to place two pieces.”

Pellerin ultimately realized she was likely off-route. “I weighed my options, knowing these last two pieces wouldn’t hold much more than static bodyweight,” she said, “and figured I could pull it off. I did a few pretty hard moves to find nothing but a fully closed seam. This was more risk than I could handle.”

Unable to drop back into the corner, she downclimbed to her last “iffy” piece of protection and asked her partner to take in the slack. As she weighted the rope, the rock “exploded in my face,” says Pellerin.

Her two highest pieces of protection blew and Pellerin fell between 20 to 25 feet, smashing into the corner. “It was hard to give a soft catch because I’d started taking [in the rope],” Papert said.

Pellerin immediately realized that her ankle was broken. Pellerin was in immense pain, Papert recalled, but she was adamant that they clean their gear off the pitch before bailing. The former popped a couple of Ibuprofen, and the pair improvised a splint from some climbing tape and the cardboard backing of a chocolate bar wrapper.

“I was kicking myself for not bringing an inReach,” Pellerin said. “I remembered my conversation with my roommate who couldn’t find hers before I left. And my two other friends who had one, but I was in too much of a hurry to go get it on the other side of town.”

They were still 1,300 feet off the ground, and light was fading fast. They rappelled the face via the bolts on the route next to Crouching Tiger, but stuck ropes and other issues led to the pair not reaching the ground until midnight.

Morale was low. “It was pitch dark, we were incredibly thirsty and tired,” Pellerin said. “I felt useless, but remained as positive as could be, with words of encouragement, as Ines was desperately trying to find a safe descent line. I knew my pain level would be the same in the tent down there, [as it was] up here, and nobody would rescue us at this time of the day. Nobody even knew that we were in trouble, thanks to me being stupid and not carrying a satellite device.”

Once at the bottom of the line, they tried to make a plan. “Again and again Em was telling me she was fine to walk out,” Papert said. “But I was like, ‘No way.’” Ultimately, Papert decided to run out for help, but serious storms were scheduled to roll in the following day. If they delayed, air rescue would be increasingly unlikely.

Just before Papert set off alone, Pellerin stopped her. Neither woman had cell phone service, but playing around on her iPhone, Pellerin had found an SOS button to send an “Emergency Text via Satellite.”

For a while, they weren’t sure if it did anything, but the pair soon received a message from Apple’s support team. They asked her if she had an emergency contact she’d like to reach out to, and Pellerin gave the number of her partner, Ian Middleton. She was allowed to send a 40-character message. She wrote: “Call SAR broken ankle 6hour hike Slesse.” Slesse is a well-known mountain located near South Illusion Peak.

Unfortunately, the iPhone SOS system itself has limited utility. Apple would not contact Search and Rescue services, and Pellerin was only able to communicate via short texts. “They changed the responder on the chat every half hour,” Pellerin recalled, “and they didn’t seem to have the capacity to reach out to search and rescue. I mentioned did you contact SAR about 20 times.” Each time, the automated answer given was worryingly vague. The appropriate emergency services have been contacted. An ambulance is on its way. An ambulance waiting for them at the trailhead, of course, would do little good.

The saving grace of the feature was that Pellerin was able to transmit a lone 40-character message to Middleton. He saw the message before he went to bed, and immediately contacted local SAR. “My emergency contact spent the night coordinating the rescue,” Pellerin said. “The only information he was given was my coordinates and the 40-character message.” Middleton had no way to reply, and Apple’s ever-revolving series of SOS operators gave no indication whether or not SAR was in progress, save for their default: The appropriate emergency services have been contacted. An ambulance is on its way.

But Pellerin and Papert stuck it out, and at 7:45 A.M. a SAR helicopter appeared in the sky. By 9:00 A.M., both were airlifted out, and by noon, they were at the hospital, where Pellerin received treatment for a heel fracture. Heavy storms began pounding the mountain at 10:30 A.M. and did not cease for four days. It was a narrow escape.

Without this iPhone SOS feature, Pellerin and Papert’s ordeal may have quickly gone from “epic” to “nightmare.” It’s a feature that all climbers and outdoor enthusiasts should be aware of, the pair said, both in terms of its capabilities (and its limits).

Not all iPhones offer this SOS feature. Only newer models, updated with the latest software, are capable of satellite connection, and it also doesn’t work in most nations. Only 16 countries are currently supported, and they are exclusively Western (Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand). Per Apple’s iPhone “Emergency SOS” page:

You need an iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 15, or iPhone 15 Pro with:

• iOS 16.1 or later in the U.S. or Canada

• iOS 16.2 or later in France, Germany, Ireland, and the U.K.
• iOS 16.4 or later in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland

It’s useful, but a far cry from the functionality of a dedicated satellite communicator like an inReach—and by no means a replacement for one. Without Middleton catching their message and immediately jumping into action to contact and coordinate with SAR, the pair could’ve been stranded, waiting in vain for a helivac while an ambulance idled at a trailhead six hours away.

“It was so much better than nothing,” Pellerin—now recovering at home in Squamish—said. “[But] I would say that overall, the service is more suitable for someone running out of gas down the Coquihalla Highway in the winter (without phone service) than for a rescue in the mountains. I was kicking myself for not bringing an inReach.”