A POPULAR travel influencer couple who shared their van adventures online have died in a horror off-road crash.
Rescuers suspect that Stacey Tourout and Matthew Yeomans lost control of their vehicle while navigating challenging terrain in the mountainous area near Trout Lake, British Columbia, Canada.
Canadian adventurers Stacey and Matthew were the creators behind the Toyota World Runners YouTube channel, garnering over 200,000 subscribers and attracting 72,000 followers on Instagram.
News of their deaths was shared on social media by friends and family and confirmed by Kaslo Search and Rescue, who responded to the scene.
Mark Jennings-Bates, a manager with Kaslo SAR, said rescuers were called to an offroad motor vehicle incident around 7:30pm local time on August 7.
An insider mentioned that the incident occurred on a forestry road, located deep in the mountains, far north in the valley near the village of Trout Lake.
“Our teams were able to get to them efficiently. It’s a long journey, but they got there efficiently. So that was very, very helpful.
“And of course that means that the helicopter pilot could also fly straight to the destination with confidence that he was going to find them.”
Jennings-Bates said that one of the occupants was dead when they arrived, while the other was rushed to hospital where they later died.
He said the exact cause of the crash wasn’t clear, though the running theory is a loss of control on rough terrain.
It also isn’t known whether the couple had been filming at the time.
Audiences enjoyed following their adventures throughout North and South America, as well as tracking their progress on constructing the “world’s first Land Cruiser Chinook in 100 days,” according to their YouTube description.
The custom vehicle combines the body of a Toyota Chinook camper and a Toyota Land Cruiser to create an off-road camper van.
It’s not clear whether they were riding in the Toyota Chinook when they died.
