After a lost hiker on Vancouver Island called for help on his dying cellphone, volunteers spent Christmas Eve searching through bogs and heavy woods before rescuing him on Christmas Day.

'These are all volunteers from the community who spent their Christmas Eve and day looking for the missing hiker, in terrible conditions, from the weather to the bogs and the heavily wooded area.'-Air force Capt. Tanya Broughton

The 34-year-old had gone hiking on Dec. 24 in East Sooke Regional Park, about 25 kilometres west of Victoria. After losing his way in the heavily wooded area, he called the 911 emergency number on his cellphone.

A search-and-rescue Buffalo aircraft from 19 Wing Comox, the air force base in Vancouver Island's Comox Valley, was dispatched and dropped 56 flares throughout the area, said plane commander Capt. Tanya Broughton.

Broughton said the man was told to stay where he was so that searchers would be able to find him more easily.

The hunt failed to turn up the hiker overnight but searchers continued in the morning and found him at 9:20 a.m. on Dec. 25.

"These are all volunteers from the community who spent their Christmas Eve and day looking for the missing hiker, in terrible conditions, from the weather to the bogs and the heavily wooded area," said Broughton.

'The recent windstorms had brutalized the area, so it was a horrible area to search, trails were obliterated. We had to go over and under downed trees and also had to use a chainsaw to get through in some areas.'-Search and rescue manager Victoria Weber

The search was hampered by the havoc wrought in the area by recent storms, said volunteer search and rescue manager Victoria Weber.

"The recent windstorms had brutalized the area, so it was a horrible area to search, trails were obliterated," said Weber. "We had to go over and under downed trees and also had to use a chainsaw to get through in some areas."

The man had ventured only three metres off the marked trail but that was enough to disorient him, Weber said.

It's not the only time in the past week that a dying cellphone has been used by someone to facilitate a rescue in British Columbia.

A man trapped by trees in Vancouver's Stanley Park during recent storms remembered he had a cellphone in his backpack and called rescuers. He had been trapped for six days.