lost tramper in Paparoas

In the Czech woman's situation, after a few days at MacKenzie, I would have picked the first clearish day when planes / helicopters could possibly be flying, started a bonfire outside and started piling mattresses from the public hut on it. Diesel from the generator room of the Ultimate Hikes Lodge if possible, you could get a hell of a blaze and masses of smoke going. Any pilot would pay attention, thinking the hut was on fire and investigate. Three separate mattress bonfires say 20 m apart in a line or a triangle so they look really unusual if at all possible. No criticism of the woman's actions after the initial accident, but it's good to share ways to attract attention if electronic methods aren't available / don't work. I remember the days before PLB's, (or before I had money for an EPIRB) we were doing big remote sea kayaking trips (Stewart Island, Fiordland, Vancouver Island), thinking how we would try and attract attention in an emergency when we had no electronic means at all with us. Conclusion was three really big fires evenly spaced along the beach would be the best bet.

@waynowski, I agree with you that ultimately people are responsible for their own safety and decisions, but I do think that we have a duty to look out for each other too. I'm not saying I feel responsible as such, but a phone call to doc would have taken almost no effort. I suppose I'm hoping that someone will tell me that doc's protocols are such that they wouldn't have taken any action even if I had made that call....

i dont know i'd have called anyone, if i thought there was avalanche danger i wouldnt expect anyone to persist in those conditions, people dont normally try and go right through the alpine area on the routeburn when theres a lot of snow. they turn back, how were you to know thats what these people had done? i would have expected someone to be in a valley somewhere more likely safe... its not unusual for a car to be at a road end for a few days,, theres nothing to day DOC would have done anything after such a short time. they could have been in the rock burn or you can dead south and if your'e equipped get into the upper caples area... DOC don't have the resources to go hunting for people because theres a car thats been at a road end for a couple of days and the police may do nothing either.... people abandon cars all the time because they run out of money and cant put petrol in the cars and leave the cars where they stop. there various scenarios, if you don't leave intentions the field is wide open as to what you've done. do you spend the money on sending a helicopter in for every car sitting at a road end a couple of days just because its winter?

Hi @Aedin. It's never going to hurt to call Police or DOC if you're concerned, and make it their decision. But if you weren't sufficiently concerned, and if evidently nobody else was concerned either, I'd not take it harshly. I like to think that I'd care if I had reason to (and I should), but I don't call Police or DOC every time I see a car parked at the end of a road. By a large margin, without further information, the most likely explanation is that everything's fine, and it sounds like you derived a perfectly reasonable explanation for seeing it there two days in a row. So did everyone else. In the end, more useful would have been for the couple to have arranged a person to be concerned by a time they didn't report back, or take some reliable communication, or make more rational and informed decisions about not going where they went, or any of multiple other things. I'm sure it wasn't by choice, but they didn't exactly make it easy for anyone else to derive that they were in trouble. Sadly sometimes these things just add together and happen, and I guess we all have to deal with them.

i was on tongariro with a lot of people doing the crossing in a storm, i felt a disaster may happen with a large no of people struggling with the weather and being ill clothed. all i could do was point out to people on a map where they were and how far they had to go, , and leave them to it, most were reliant on getting a bus at the far end for their transport. at the time there was no one in such obvious distress that they needed first aid. we had to look after our own group and abandon our trip and leave them to it, didnt read about anything bad happening in the news. but it may have haunted me if it had. sometimes you're powerless, you dont realise you have a chance to make a difference or cant make a difference. unfortunately thats life sometimes

One time a couple of mates and I went ski-touring, basing ourselves at the Routeburn Falls hut for a few days. We were hoping to go as far as Harris Saddle but the route up there was loaded with snow i.e. an avalanche risk so instead we practised with the 'pieps' on L. Harris. Anyway, my point is that the car was parked at the road end for quite a few days during our wee holiday. Also, there was a lovely family based at the Routeburn Falls hut too. I particularly remember the toddler in nappies, Mackenzie. Ma and Pa were good company and had lots of diversional props to keep the family entertained. I guess Mackenzie is all grown up and having his own adventures now...

Pizova and Petr, both from tiny Czech towns, started their journey despite being warned off by Department of Conservation staff, having no tent or locator beacon and telling no one of their plans. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11701047

She was extraordinarily lucky that there happened to be a Czech woman in Glenorchy who was on Facebook and paying attention to any NZ related news on Czech Facebook, and went to the trouble of following up on a post raising concerns about them.

lost runner rescued http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/83651901/missing-runner-makes-bivvy-while-lost-in-the-ranges

Maybe we need a completely new forum space for accidents and safety. We seem to spend enough time discussing it in the campfire forum.