Unprepared & foolish: stories of idiots you've met

yup double win there, they dont have to carry the weight and they know other people are likely to bale them out... the answer is don't bale them out and they will stop doing it... the fault is as much with the people who bale them out and perpetuate the problem. if its not a life threatening situation.

Frank and I met a very odd person at Mid-Taipo Hut one summer. He was carrying a cheap metal detector for gold prospecting which he'd already managed to break and a raft for floating down the river. I'd say he'd got that from the Warehouse. He had a cheap tent and for food was only carrying a big can of whey powder. He was already sick of that so we gave him some 2 minute noodles (BTW, can't believe I used to eat that s--t). He was friendly enough but had some strange ideas. One was that he'd been corresponding over the internet with Agnetha from ABBA and they were engaged. Agnetha is a highly private reclusive person who values her own company so this was even more unlikely! He'd only just managed to haul himself across the Taipo on the flying fox/cablecar thingy so couldn've been stuck there otherwise. We ran into him at the public library a couple of months later and as we chatted, I noticed the security officer was lurking close by...

You carry 2 minute noodles huh? Who do you reckon the security guard was really watching.

but i'm engaged to Agnetha

One that springs to mind is a group of young folk with light sneakers and jeans/teeshirts and no daypacks heading up the Bealey Spur track. We were coming down near the tarn shelf and being in June the track was icy in the shady areas. I said as they passed us, "Hope you have lights, it'll be dark in less than an hour." "Yeah, we have our phones," they replied... and carried on. Sheesh.

Here's another story fresh from last month. A friend and I delayed our departure on a remote DOC classified "expert/route" due to rain. The next day was clear so off we went. The route involves travel in streams most of the way, part of it in a gorgey area with plenty of windfall. Almost at the hut we met a young French couple wading up the gorge in jeans and tshirts with tiny backpacks the size of a schoolbag. They almost didn't make it to the hut the night before having taken considerably longer than they expected to find the route, arriving just on dark. At a key junction,they became "lost", looking for "the orange triangle" not realising that the route simply involved a slosh along the river. Could have been a cold wet night out for them. Imteresting that thry felt they were up to tackling an "expert/route".

A trip leader from a previous tramping club I was in some 30 years ago lead us astray quite spectacularly in the Ruahinis. This was some 30 years ago or more. Cant remember which hut we were headed for but the walk was up the river. For some odd reason he turned us off the main river into a side stream which got steeper and rockier until just on dark we hit a waterfall. Flys were set up on a scree slope at a very precarious angle just before it started to snow. Not a comfortable night at all. In the morning we headed back to the main river and 10 minutes further up from where we turned was the hut.