Incidents in the mountains

if you cannot recognise and assess avalanche risk when it is present, any other experience in the mountains is irrelevant. with the increasing no's of people and increasing publicity of the routeburn, someone was eventually going to end up pushing the envelope too far.

I believe many people come unstuck because they push too hard for the next hut. Have a shelter with you, don't be shy to use it. That's my philosophy.

and they often push too hard to the next hut. because they dont have shelter with them. i've seen a lot more people running the routeburn in a day now, minimal clothing, minimal gear, i've seen people who have to keep moving in order to stave off hypothermia in bad weather... that is going to end badly eventually... doesnt help DOC are smoothing ou more and more of the track so its more attractive for runners to do it all in a day, people dont realise that often most of the heat is in the sun at higher altitudes, loose the sun and it can get a lot colder very fast.

Marlborough man Shaun Crabb talks Land Search and Rescue http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/motivate-me/83630609/marlborough-man-shaun-crabb-talks-land-search-and-rescue

Kreig: Have a shelter with you, don't be shy to use it. +1

Of course it's bad when something bad happens, but the fact that this Czech woman spent nearly 5 weeks without outside help between Harris Saddle and MacKenzie Hut indicates that no one else was silly enough to try to go through there for a period of at last 5 weeks. There are a lot of people around with both greater and lesser skills and experience than this couple, all of them exercised sensible judgement / listened to warnings and didn't try to go through. I would think quite a number of people went up to Falls Hut and Lake Harris before returning, the track from the Divide to Key Summit and Howden Hut was likewise fairly well trodden, so with one exception people are exercising good judgement / heeding warnings, the systems to provide information / warn people of what to expect are working well.

"the fact that this Czech woman spent nearly 5 weeks without outside help between Harris Saddle and MacKenzie Hut indicates that no one else was silly enough to try to go through there for a period of at last 5 weeks." Could it possibly mean that they were just [un]lucky to show up at a critical window? Perhaps all the silly people weren't able to get through for the same reasons she claimed she couldn't get out having arrived there. Also I haven't checked the historic weather data, but if the man hadn't slipped and she hadn't been stalled for several days as a consequence, how likely is it that they'd have made it completely through, told their friends and written in forums that they had a great winter trip and that everyone should do it, and that nothing would have been reported in the media?

My understanding is that they had already got lost/well off track and spent a night out in bad conditions before he fell, then she spent another two nights in the open before she got to MacKenzie. My impression is that at Harris Saddle, it would have been obviously off the wall difficult to continue across the Hollyford Face, with deep snow and very little indication of where the trail was as marker poles would have been mostly completely buried. From Stuff: "According to Kennett, they had no tent or locator beacon and told no-one of their plans. They spent one freezing night outside and the next day, disoriented in heavy fog and strong winds and with snow falling, slipped five to seven metres down a steep slope." "Unable to move her partner, the woman spent two more nights sleeping above the tree line against a "vertical rock", whatever possessions she had stuffed into her sleeping bag for warmth, Kennett said. Over the next two days she tried but failed in foggy, snowy conditions to reach the campsite she could make out in the distance."

you'd normally have to walk across the lake to avoid harris bluffs in heavy snow, it would be easy to slide off or get avalanched off, people normally avoid the buffs completely when theres much snow as its considered too dangerous to go near