On 30 April 1992 Boeing Vertol Helicopter Rescue 311 was searching for missing hikers near Bella Coola, British Columbia. During a hoisting sequence transferring personnel into the aircraft, the helicopter lost power and crashed. Corporal Phillip Young, a Royal Canadian Air Force Search and Rescue Technician was killed in the crash above Hammer Lakes close to the Monarch Icefield.
Three Bella Coola residents – Roger Harris, Douglas Baker and Andy Schmidt, all from the provincial emergency program, Corporal Young and Tony Isaacs, another Royal Canadian Air Force Search and Rescue Technician, were part of the search. The day before, tracks were found above Hammer Lakes on an air search and they planned to go back on skis. Roger drove the four of them up the Nusatsum Forest Service Road about 25 kilometers near the Odeguard Falls Trail. They walked to Hammer Lakes Trail, took a left then started skiing up toward the area where the tracks were spotted.
When they reached a particular knoll, the weather was deteriorating and Young and Isaacs called for the Labrador helicopter that was in the area searching to come and get them. There were no more signs to follow of where the hikers had headed. In the process of picking the crew up, the helicopter engine failed. Young was thrown out, Isaacs was still on the ground, Baker, Schmidt, and Harris were in the helicopter and crashed with it as it rolled about six times down the hill until it came to a rest upside down. The crew and searchers had various injuries, from cuts, burns and bruises to more serious non-life threatening injuries. A second Labrador helicopter was in the valley when the beacon went off indicating the first one had gone down and a crew headed out from the Bella Coola airport.
The lost hikers were found several months later on Mt. Dagon, 60 kilometers southeast of Bella Coola. A coroner’s report noted the hikers were caught in a snow avalanche as the cause of death.
A concrete cairn and a plaque were installed at the crash site on 7 July 1993, but Ray Hawkes felt that since then Young had been forgotten. In 2022, Hawkes planned a memorial ceremony with two segments. In the morning, he solo climbed in Young’s name up the northwest side of Mt. Saugstad and in the afternoon he organized a ceremony to install a commemorative post at 5,900 feet above the crash site. Hawke's eight-foot long piece of stained cedar with a flag and badges was raised next to the cairn. Corporal Philllip Young’s name and the Department of National Defence Search and Rescue technician motto “that others may live" are engraved on it.
