Not a good time to be lost in the Tararuas

Thanks for the further thoughts. It'd be sad to remember people for the way they died since no doubt both of these people have accomplished a lot in other places, and I hope they're remembered much more for other parts of their lives. It really is a tragedy (as it always is) that people die this way, and all that can be done now is to try and learn from it. As time's gone on and more information has come out, though, this whole thing has seemed more and more to me as if it's a perfect example of the exact wrong way to do things. Sure there was luck involved, but they seem to have done just about everything in their power to help out their bad luck. If anything, it was more a lack of good luck than a presence of bad luck that was the issue here. Given the high-profile bagging of people that often occurs on by rescuers through the media (often justified but sometimes unjustified, I think) when people survive, I think it's disappointing that it's seemingly treated as a taboo subject if people die. To do so hides the real consequences of bad preparation and bad decisions. Something in the way these two people did things was just seriously screwed up. It's true that many people do things in similar ways, but I'm not convinced anything's likely to change unless there's some real publicity around what people did badly to cause stuff like this to happen. The only concern I'd personally have is that one of the people here probably held a much higher position of responsibility in how everything happened than the other, and if that's true then it'd be a shame for responsibility to be implied equally. Taking a look at what was publicised through reports of the coroner's investigation, we know that these people: * Didn't take a tent, bivy bags, or any kind of portable shelter besides sleeping bags. The whole plan of staying alive during their trip relied on the safety of huts. * Didn't check the forecast, or make an obvious effort to understand the weather or what was coming. * Didn't have adequate clothing or gear for possible weather conditions. * Ignored advice of a person coming the other way that they shouldn't go ahead. Obviously you have to judge the person giving advice, but they also: * Made an awful decision about carrying on when they were at a great point of safety. * Didn't adequately judge the physical abilities of both people making up the group. (From the way things are described, it sounds as if the stronger and more experienced person probably didn't adequately take the others' capabilities into account when making decisions, and maybe this contributed to both of them ending up in trouble.) * Probably went out with a never-give-up and she'll-be-right attitude, according to a coroners' inquiry witness. * Didn't take a map and compass with skills to use them, or *any* navigation gear for that matter. * Were probably relying on an apparently instinctive ability to find huts in bad conditions, according to a coroner's inquiry witness. * Walked into a blizzard on a plateau at an exposed high altitude, despite all of the above, with an expectation of reaching Kime Hut. Personally I think the lack of an EPIRB or the revelation that they had no cellphone is a red herring compared with everything else, although the cellphone thing especially has been thrown around a lot as something they supposedly should have had. The situation should never have needed to get that far. The media (mostly only the DomPost) has reported all of these things here and there, but the highlighted conclusion drawn from the coroner's investigation seemed to be that perhaps the Search and Rescue coordination could be improved! This is disputed by the coordinator. A paragraph at the end of the final media report indicated that the key factors in the incident were unrelated to SAR's coordination. http://www.stuff.co.nz/3429667

izogi, thank you for going through the effort to gather all this information and sum it up for everyone! Also thank you especially for setting an example of how to be respectful to the people involved while still analysing what happened and learning from it in a logical way that is not warped by a false sense of politeness. If that would become more common, maybe less incidents like this one would happen; exactly as you say. As to the findings that you present - if they are true there is only one thing I can say about that: WOW! No further comment necessary. Maybe one more little realisation can be drawn from all this: "Experience" is not what you get automatically from nothing but spending a lot of time on the trails. You can happily survive weeks and weeks on the trails by pure chance (and I think loads of people do just that every year!), think that you learned how to do it, and still get into huge trouble next time you go bush. Actual experience comes from spending time on the trails AND consciously switching on your brain to investigate a few what-if's along the way, PLUS ideally learning from and with people who already do have (again, actual!) experience. Happy and safe trails everyone! Matt

Thanks Matt. In hindsight, I'm not sure if the point I made about inadequate clothing is correct or not. They were found with 8 layers and 4 layers of clothing respectively, whatever that equates to. I should stress that those points are just derived from media reports, and I'm no expert at examining accidents. I don't have first-hand information and some of it may be out of context. The official coroner's report still doesn't seem to be public and I've not requested it, but I'm tempted to because I'd like to see what the coroner actually determined rather than the media-filtered view of it. I guess I just find it frustrating to see the media highlight points that seem so trivial, like "a cellphone may have saved their lives" or "a compass may have saved their lives". Lots of things "might" have saved their lives, but that kind of coverage doesn't address the problem, and makes outdoor recreation appear risky and dangerous to people who aren't familiar with it. This is such a classic example of how a plethora of shortcomings, bad preparation, risky attitudes, unrealistic beliefs about nature, ultimately bad decisions and some severe weather to top it off, added to have them in a situation with all the odds horribly against them. Most outdoor accidents, certainly tramping accidents, are a combination of several factors adding together. Rather than tip-toeing around it, I think this should be a template example of exactly how not to do things. It's a case that shows so clearly why it all matters. The saddest thing is that this *is* an outdoor culture thing in New Zealand, which is why it doesn't seem fair to point at one or two people and say it was all their fault. In a specific way perhaps it was, but they could well have been following examples of role models around them with comparable attitudes, probably missing out on a century of well document knowledge gained from previous outdoor accidents. Blaming someone without acknowledging the wider problem isn't going to fix the culture or reduce further tragedies, and neither is reporting on trivial aspects. Anyway, those are my thoughts.

>a century of well documented knowledge gained from previous outdoor accidents. Johnny Mulherron's articles in the FMC Bulletin are good for this and I make a point of reading Graeme Kate's SAR reports on his soft rock site so I can gain from someone else's epics without having to undergo my own. I get lines going through my head such as "the deceased was found with his helmet attached to his pack" when I wish I'd thought of bringing my helmet! The Chch Tramping Club was running the odd open meeting where mishaps were discussed and causes identified. I recommend attending a risk management course run by the MSC to get one thinking along the lines of identifying risk factors and formulating management of them.

Thanks for pointing those out. I always find that FMC BackCountry Accident's feature an interesting read, and I'd forgotten about SoftRock. High Misadventure, by Paul Hersey (a book released during 2009) is also an excellent read. He's focused more on alpine and climbing accidents than tramping accidents, but it's still very relevant to both. It's very well researched with a lot of respect for the subjects and frequently direct interviews with survivors, but still getting to the critical points about underlying causes. I have to admit it was the most media-populist cases that got my attention (Three John's Hut in 1977 and Ruapehu Army Cadets in 1990 in my case), but in hindsight these both seemed like minor extras compared with the rest of the great work he's compiled. It's very well written.

OOhh - 3 John's hut. How many sleepless nights has that incident been responsible for? We spent a windy night recently in a hut and some of the guys fessed up to having those thoughts (Boundary Col story). I wore earplugs.

Yeah! Three Johns Hut is always in the back of my mind. Rob McLean who was one of those killed was part of the same Forestry intake as me & we'd hung out as part of the same group when based in Rotorua. A good guy! Mind you I knew about the power of the wind prior to that having been one of the party that discovered the unoccupied Cataract Creek Bivvie in the Whitcombe had been blown over a precipice. (We had been planning to stay in it.)