Here's an interesting one from Stuff. A man and two teenagers activate an EPIRB after a track they were expecting from a map wasn't there. (More completely, they were equipped to stay out another night, but had set a panic time of midnight, and didn't want to trigger a blind search.)
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/6742050/Old-map-likely-cause-of-trampers-call
Here's the area -- http://www.topomap.co.nz/NZTopoMap?v=2&ll=-44.892727,168.010006&z=14 -- They'd been up Mistake Creek, over U-Pass, then down Hut Creek and couldn't find the marked track back to the road, which presumably slowed them, or something like that. I've never been there, but it looks pretty cool.
The media seems to be accepting that it was a faulty map to "blame" (they possibly also had an older map version), which I don't agree with but I can appreciate some awkwardness in being caught out. 20 years ago they'd have probably just walked out the next morning, and even today a search official might have assessed that they could just be overdue and not done much without giving them a chance to find their own way out, but in modern times the existence of EPIRBs can sometimes complicate the issue for people tramping.
Anyway, as far as best practice goes, is this possibly a situation when the panic time was set too early, especially given there were 3 people in the party and they had an EPIRB? (You'd anticipate that if something went seriously wrong, chances are that at least one person could still activate it.) Maybe they could also have sought recent advice before leaving, if the plan was so critical on them being out by a certain time without causing a panic.
This also seems like the sort of time when a SPOT beacon or other non-emergency comms device would be a really useful thing to have.
Oh, and another gut feeling is that possibly they never gave themselves enough slack time to walk the circuit they were attempting, hence the delays being problematic when an expected track wasn't found.
There is nothing new in the dilema they faced added by the epirb. Without an epirb they would still have faced the choice of continuing late in the day,against their better judgement 'to avoid causing trouble' or waiting till the morning knowing that people would be worrying and maybe searching. The foreknowledge of which possibility leads people like myself to build large buffers, as much as 5 days on longer trips, into times in intentions- only to face a 7 day rather than 7 day wait for help when things do go wrong.
My call is: take an epirb, and leave intentions with large margins for error / delay. So if the weather packs in, going is tough, or a minor injury slows you down then you can do the sensible thing and take your time with no pressure to meet a deadline. But it everything goes really wrong you can get the help you need.
Spot adds the option of an Ok message. But the fact that spot Ok is an 'unreliable' service - i.e. no confirmation message comes back to the unit to say the ok was received, and ok messages have been seen not to get through on various occasions (past stories on this site), means that you would still be worried that people were searching even if you were able to send a spot Ok.
One issue with epirbs also is that all the listed contacts have to be aware of the trip. The 4wd club Im in had an issue over xmas where an epirb was set off. It was a privately owned epirb not one of the club ones. First contact was also on the trip second did not know what was going on so in the end the response was very delayed. It wouldnt of made a difference in this instance but does make you wonder about the response these things get. I was always under the impression that a activation always means help wanted now and they are treated that way but in this case because the person contacted did not know about the trip no action was taken. The members of the trip ended up having to find cellphone coverage and make calls themselves several hours later.
You're correct, madpom, I chose a bad subject line for the thread. The more I think about this, the more I convince myself that it must have just been a mistake in the planning, or maybe they slept in three hours longer than they should have, our given themselves a day less than they needed, or something. I think what mostly irks me is that it's the fault of the maps or LINZ that a track wasn't marked correctly, which to me seems like rubbish.
And I'm also a bit miffed that once again the word "experienced" has been thrown in as if it makes someone an authority.
And having nothing done because an epirb contact was unaware of the trip is something I wouldn't have expected, especially if it's been triggered from a backcountry area.
Here's The Southland Times' edition of the exact same story, but it has a comments thread at the end.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/6741994/Old-map-likely-cause-of-trampers-call
If you scroll to the comments, Chris Casey has responded without the journalistic wrapping and suggested that he probably set the SAR panic time too early. He seems pretty with it and acknowledging the issues from his comments. Just a silly mistake, learned a few things, and more to think about for future occasions.
I've done that route, its an interesting/tough one and you do have to be 'on it' to pick up the track down hut creek. Its there though at the bush edge. The friend I did the route with had done it before and had issues finding the track so we were prepared to search for it and found it with little trouble. Once on it the track was pretty clear.
