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A man in his 30s had to be rescued with a helicopter sling early Thursday after spending the night on a small ledge above a 100-metre cliff in Banff National Park.

Late Wednesday, Parks Mountain Safety got a call from the man who got stranded after he tried to scramble down the northwest face of Mount Fairview, which is near Lake Louise.

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The man had hiked up the regular trail to Mount Fairview.

“He ended up getting to the summit as it was starting to get a little bit dark and wanted to try a shortcut to get back down to Lake Louise,” said Steve Holeczi, a visitor safety specialist with Parks Canada. “He started going back down the other side.

“It doesn’t look that bad going down that way at first … but it gets steeper and steeper and steeper and he ended up having to do some pretty serious down climbing. It got dark and, at a certain point, he was above a massive cliff.”

Visitor safety specialists conducted a ground search of the area around 7 p.m. Wednesday and were able to locate the man, but they were unable to reach him because he was in technical terrain and it was after dark.