Weather Causes Chaos

Yeah - but when you run the Milford as an assempbly line you cant have them sitting there all backing up on the belt just because it rains ...

Exactly!

Who pays for that in the end, given that it's not an emergency/rescue situation? The 170 people on the Milford Track, I mean. Does DOC just budget for it in the interests of keeping everyone in the huts they were booked into, or does everyone get invoiced on top of what they've already paid?

Does not really sound like it was a case to use a emergency locater beacon. The instructions of mine say "Should only be used in situations of grave and imminent danger!, What exactly does this mean? Technically speaking you should only activate your P-EPIRB when all other means of self rescue have been exhausted...... When all else fails and you feel your situation has truly become extreme, ask yourself the following questions. Am I in danger of losing life, limb, eye sight or valuable property if not rescued soon? Am I in danger of not surviving the night or upcoming hours if not rescued soon? If you answer yes with confidence to these questions, it is time to activate your P-EPIRB.

Where do your quotes end? I presume after the first sentence. That is interesting. I don't own a beacon and have never seen one so it is interesting to hear what instructions are on it. When you listen to the news media recently they seem to report the authorities as being very enthusiastic about beacons. They almost seem to be implying that we will forgive other unprepardness as long as you have a beacon. I emailed Chris Tews from Mountain Safety about this after I saw him quoted in the NZ Herald and find out that this is not the case. They are certainly quite concerned about the way beacons are being used. The reason I can't bring myself to buy or carry a beacon yet is that if they were invented 40 years ago and I had carried one for my whole tramping career, I can think of 3 or 4 occasions when I might have trigered one. However in none of those cases would the outcome have been any different. And all the time I would have been carrying a 500g brick which could have been an extra 500g of food or clothing. However all that could change on my next trip I guess. None of us are quite as young as we used to be and one of my best tramping mates seems to be on rather a lot of pills so might have to carry one for him at least.

Sorry, I forgot to include the last " and I can not figure out how to edit a post. The whole thing including the questions is the quote.

I'll put "editing posts" on the to do list. ;-)

I don't have details of cases. No comment.

So the whole text is printed on the unit? Excellent. That, hopefully will make people think a little.