Search for 2 mushroom pickers near Terrace expands

The search has expanded for two men who went missing on a mushroom-picking trip east of Terrace, B.C. last week.

Around 125 volunteers went out Saturday morning, looking for any signs of 26-year-old Ike Murray and 32-year-old Michael Sabo, who went missing last Sunday.

Terrace Search and Rescue leader Dave Jephson said the pair were with another man in the Lorne Creek area on the north side of the Skeena River, east of Terrace, and failed to return to the boat by a pre-determined time Sunday. The third man left to get help, and a search launched Monday.

Jephson said that since the search began, more and more people have come out each day to look for the missing men, which is helping to make the search extremely thorough.

"With the people that are showing up, we're able to create teams of five to eight and we're sending them in to a designated assignment area and they're turning everything over. They're looking under the logs, they're looking under the rocks," he said.

Jephson said the search leaders believe something has happened to the men, but he is hopeful they will be found.

Last week, a 55-year-old man from Anahim Lake, B.C. got separated from his group while mushroom-picking 12 kilometres up the Van Dyke Forest Service Road.

Terrace Search and Rescue came out to the area to assist Stewart Search and Rescue in a ground search, and walked the missing man out after smoke from a fire he lit was spotted by an RCMP helicopter.

A 71-year-old Burnaby man who went missing while mushroom-picking outside Nakusp almost two weeks ago has still not been located.