Four trampers overdue in the Tararuas

sometimes, it can be a bit random... less likely to update something if it doesnt turn out to be a major drama

It appeared to be a weather related story and the weather was the big news of the week. Had the big news been Trump having a bad hair day this story wouldnt of seen light of day

knee jerk, overdue trampers in a big storm... who hasnt been overdue in a tramp before? ideally your contacts give you some leeway before they raise the alarm esp if you have a locator beacon... I tell mine I could be out up to a day or two later than i ideally will be out and not to raise the alarm till after that time, although i have a SPOT comms device that usually successfully transmits whats happening anyway, and i have a PLB because the spots connectivity can be ify at times. if i'm silent there may be an issue

Do remember all news outlets are in the job of selling advertising. Thats where the money comes from. In order to sell advertising they need to get as many people as possible reading the news. " It rained but nothing else happened" doesnt really cut it but trampers a few hours late would of sold heaps of papers. Look at the other tramping story from that event which hasnt been mentioned here yet. Family group got to the carpark fine but couldnt cross the ford at Catchpole (rimituka forest park) so they spent the night in the car. Now a week later in the local paper a 2 page spread on the family history how much other tramping etc. We might thing stuck at carpark for a day ho hum but for the papers its a big deal

All of this is true, and these days any story on the wire titled "four trampers missing in ...." will likely get published. I'm still wonder how it got into the newswire, though. Media wouldn't know to bother with it unless they were notified, and usually that notification would come from Police, and comments from Police this time looked like it was the case, but in the past I've not known Police to push something to media unless there's a significant reason for concern. When I first saw it, I first assumed there must be something to it for these reasons, but when reading into it further it just got confusing as to why anyone should be worried.

you could post some bait to your favourite websites and see if the press take it and run with it... in aus the press were using opinions from an amateur tramping forum as comments from an expert in relation to an article around an incident in the bush, cant recall the exact incident...

Ive seen things in the papers here and thought Im sure I read that here first