personal locator beacons

Reminds me of an incident that a friend of mine had when a friend she was tramping with sprained her ankle near Waihohonu Hut. They found a wheel barrow at the hut so wheeled their friend out to the Desert Rd in the wheel barrow. Afterwards they rang DOC to explain why the wheel barrow was now at the road end and not at the hut, the person on the phone was somewhat concerned that they had not returned the wheel barrow to the hut. I wonder what would have happened if they has asked for a helecopter to evacuate them.

Haha that is a funny story regarding the wheelbarrow, I have been to that hut how far is the main rd? I remember it being about 1km? the 'sprained ankle' tramping is a classic... say no more. Anyhow... I feel I need to point out to whoever cares a few things about epirbs. 1. they can be remotely activated from the SAR chopper, so not just one way. 2. SAR wont charge you at all for using them when needed ie an injury which is serious, or bad weather has you trapped. 3. the new system when fully upgraded will have a 3rd phase of search which is the 407MHZ freq avo trancievers use so SAR should be able to pinpoint to 0.5m I recently heard a story by a chopper pilot. One of the guys responsible for promoting this particular Epirb had left it hanging in a tree in dense bush out back of GY (glenorchy..)he sent the pilot to activate it remotely then locate it. He was back in 9 mins with it in his hand. Tell you guys what, when I solo hard as trans alpine trips I always take one, but if I was to be cruising some pack track even alone its hardly worth it. Simple as that. You can hire them from the BP in Queenstown, $20 for the week. Damn good deal Mate! :) oh yea, before I go (I know this is a novel...:) reminds me of this guy who died out by rabbit pass, he was known as 'ultralight man' by a few of us, a british tramper doin it solo had sweet FA gear and was doin a hardish transalpine pass got caught out with weather I think or anyway he fell slid over a bluff. Sad thing is when SAR found him a week or so later he was in his sleeping bag and had obviusly survived the fall but died on the ledge slowly, a storm came in that week as well so he would have had a hard death.