Hutbook Search Story

When I went to Herepai hut a couple of months ago, there was a very interesting, slightly long, story written up in the back of the hut book about a search that took place back in the 1970's in the area.
I've transcribed the photos I took of it for your reading pleasure :)
I have corrected some spelling (excluding the original poster misnaming Chamberlain Creek as Chamberland and Mangahou instead of Mangahao), but the sentence structure is the same as I could interperet.
I have no way of knowing when exactly the report was written up - and the author did not sign their name to it.

In the late 60's a scout party went missing on East Peak. The scout master separated from the other three scouts to find the route, but didn't return. The three scouts started to get very cold and decided the best thing to do would be to get lower down, so they dropped into Harris Creek (not know what side of the ridge they were on).

The next day they made it out to Mangahou dam and alerted the caretaker there. The next day a full search was mounted which involved the Police, Army, and Air Force, plus many tramping clubs members. A base was made at Bryant Farm and search headquarters was a caravan.
The army put up tents and provided hot meals for everyone. The Air Force [unsure of word] helicopter only made three flights as the wind became too strong to fly.

Three search parties got flown in to various locations. The rest (searchers) had to walk to their allotted search areas. As the search proceeded the weather progressively got worse (N.Wester). High winds on the main ridge were atrocious.

It was difficult to stand up and even breathe facing the wind. Fine gravel was picked up by the wind and thrown in your face. Also we were soaked to the skin by torrential rain. Conditions were so bad we were told to go to Dundas Hut. Half way there we were forced off the tops because we couldn't handle the wind.

We made a makeshift camp on some bench above Chamberland Creek, south of West Peak. A tent could not be pitched so we tied the tent out flat and got under it. I must say I was [pretty?] comfortable considering the conditions. The bottom of my sleeping bag got wet, but other than that, all were well apart from not being able to boil the billy.

The next morning we moved off at dawn, and headed back towards East Peak. We finally got to what we thought was Ruapai Peak and made a radio sked to base. We were told to proceed back to Putara Hut as the conditions were too dangerous to search in. When we got to about Hines, the rain stopped and the wind was still so strong it instantly dried our clothes out, which helped to warm us up. I remember I was wearing two jupara parkers and soaked through. Finally arriving at Putara Hut, the hut was full of other search parties bulging at the seams.
The next morning a radio message called the search officially off, as condition were atrocious for searching.

Some months later a party found the remains of a pack and sleeping bag in Chamberland Creek. The scout masters remains were never found. It was said much later that he had serious health issues and probably bit off more than he could handle, also endangering the other scouts in the party.
Possibly the hard right turn you make at East Peak may have been mist by then and got them into trouble??

Interestingly, underneath this account was another statement, from Phil Doole, one of the Venturer Scouts who was on the original trip:

Some clarifications to the above account:
1. The events happened in early September 1973 (40 years ago).
2. I was one of the 3 Venturer scouts with Ken Balfour. We were returning to Putara Hut from a bivy between Pukemoremore and Dome (we did not reach Dundas Hut the day before)
3. We reached Ruapae Peak (not East Peak) - confirmed by the pipe which is still on Ruapae. Hail & sleep, we couldn't confirm the route off towards Hines, Ken headed back towards East Peak. I dont recall why. We waited over an hour then had to make a decision to find shelter. We opted for the quickest descent into Harris Creek headwaters. Herepai Hut did not exist then, descent in the open over Herepai Peak did not seem like a good option at the time.
4. We bivied in the top of Harris Creek and continued out to the Mangahou River Hut and then on to the caretakers house at the dam, taking 1.5 days. The weather had cleared and at the time we had no concerns for Kens safety, thinking he would have made it out and would be looking for us (we were not due out until that day as it was a 4 day trip).
5. Finding Kens gear in Chamberlain Creek is a puzzle. Perhaps it was the Ruamahanga River, he may have come to grief in Ruapae Stream?

The 40th anniversary of what came to be known as Operation Balfour was covered in articles in the Wairarapa Times Age and Wilderness Magazine in 201, both of which are worth a read.

Beacons and Bollocks

Mike over at Windy Hilltops has been recently talking a bit about the excessive selling the media has been doing lately of "Always carry a beacon".

Now, while I agree that if you can access one, they are a good thing to take with you on any trip, I am getting a bit tired of this new "tradition" that has appeared of publically berating people for not having one when 12 months ago they would have been credited with doing everything correct. Not everyone can afford to buy one, not everyone really needs one, and they are not always available for hire.

For example, we have this article in the Dominion Post:

Three Lower Hutt women missing in the Tararua Ranges have been found after spending two extra nights in the bush.

The Palmerston North Rescue helicopter located the 55 year-old woman and her two daughters aged 18 and 21 at 10am at the Island Forks bivouac.

They were airlifted back to Levin where the 18 year-old received medical treatment for a minor knee injury. The women were due back from an overnight tramp to the Waitewaewae Basin on Sunday, but took shelter at the bivouac after the daughter hurt her knee.

The injury and the high level of the river stopped the group from completing the tramp. Search Coordinator Constable Kevin Dalzell said police were notified by the woman's husband late Sunday evening when they did not arrive home.

"While the group had good clothing, shelter, a cellphone, and food, they did not have a personal locator beacon or a mountain radio which are crucial to take when you're out in the bush. There was no cellphone reception where the group was located and they would have had to climb some distance to get reception."

The older woman is an experienced tramper while her two daughters have limited tramping experience, he said. "It was a good call by the women to stay on the track under shelter until they were located."

The search covered a large area from the Waitohu Valley Road, through to Mount Thompson and the West Waitewaewae River, down to the Waitewaewae Hut and back up to High Point Mick.

(Bold emphasis mine)


I'm sorry, but calling a PLB "essential" in situations like this is a bit ludicrous. The women had found shelter, and appear to have been waiting out a drop in river levels before probably attempting to get themselves out. They had left what appears to be substantial information with someone who raised the alarm. The injury was "minor", and it does not sound like it had become a life-or-death situation yet, although they might have started running out of food. (In fact, a later article suggests just that).

In fact, in this situation, the "experienced" tramper (the Mum), was a former Search & Rescue member (according to articles). If she went out for a weekend with no beacon, but was still confident she would be found when something went wrong, then she seems to have done a lot right.

I have seen many situations recently where, yes, carrying and setting off a beacon was a good thing. And similarly situations where the person involved should have carried a beacon or similar - although in that case, the runner did a lot else wrong, like going a different route to intended, keeping going when lost, and taking no other emergency equipment. In fact, he was lucky to find a hut, which gave him knowledge of where he was again so he could get out.

Mark and I sat down and discussed the situation these women found themselves in and we agreed, if we had been in this situation and WERE carrying a beacon, we still most likely would not have set it off until it became VERY obvious we couldn't get ourselves out and / or we were completely out of food. But then I guess I wouldn't particularly be expecting SaR to be out the morning after I became overdue, especially if it was known I would be across a river that might have flooded in the rain we have had - so you then have the debate of "If SaR are likely to be looking for you, do you set the beacon you have off to tell them where you are, or do you opt to NOT set it off in the hopes they realise its not that urgent?"

For anyone who has read any of my back-stories, you'll recall a tramp we did where a beacon was set off for what was probably a similar injury to the one in this story (funnily, in the same river catchment, just much closer to the road). In re-hashing that trip and the situation, Mark and I concluded that if we were now leading it, we would probably not set off the beacon - something that was only done because it was the old 121.5 beacon, whose batteries were 10 years out of date, and the frequency was not being monitored soon, so may as well try - instead relying on the two people we had sent out to the road end to "raise the alarm" and let SaR then decide how they wanted to evacuate our punter - whether they thought they could walk her out, since we were only a couple of hours in from the road end, or if they would send in a helicopter anyway.

Yes, that would have meant a couple of hours extra waiting for the helicopter to arrive, or possibly 4 or more hours for a walk-in party. But (like the three ladies rescued this week), we were not in a life-or-death situation. Unlike the ladies, we had enough members of our party to spare two to walk out together and we didn't have a high river to cross. We had emergency shelter, and it was only soon after lunch on Saturday, so we still had the better part of two days food. We also knew that at least 6 other tramping club members would be coming through our location the next day - these are all things that a PLB cannot transmit to SaR.

With a modern beacon in hand, in the same situation, with the same kind of party, I would not activate it. Simply for the fact I believe that, other than life-or-death situations (where a beacon still might not get you a chopper fast enough) beacons should be used in situations where you cannot rescue yourself, and / or cannot walk out to get help in a reasonable amount of time.

Finally, Good news!

So, the media are finally showing outdoors people in a good light, and there has been an exceedingly positive article on stuff today about a hunter being rescued in the Ureweras.
He was well equipped, and SENSIBLE - waiting for rivers to subside while in the safety of a hut, before returning to the hut where his gear was (his base hut), which is where rescuers found him, healthy and well, but still stuck by high river levels.
Thank goodness there are still some people out there who make it to the news for what are really all the right reasons!
Good gear + good decision making = postive SaR outcome. That being said though, I would be curious as to what the weather reports had been when he went in, and therefore whether going in AT ALL was a good idea... But I cant remember what the weather reports have been like this week.

Helicopter-tastic, Episode Two

Saturday 21 June 2008


Tongariro Crossing, Mangatepopo Road End, Tongariro National Park.

Team: Rene, Paul, Myself

As Mark was away in Europe, I was often away tramping for weekends to keep myself occupied. WT&MC does a Winter Solstice trip every year to the club lodge, where you daywalk on Saturday, party Saturday night and then mooch around a bit on Sunday before heading home. Plans are always fluid depending on who is around, what the people who are capable to lead feel like doing and what the weather is up to. This year we had fantastic clear, crisp skies. The schedule indicated Tama Lakes as the daywalk, with a mountain bike trip to a local loop.

Paul, Rene and I all agreed we didn’t really feel like doing the Tama Lakes walk again. I had done it in November 2007 and found it a bit tedious. Instead, with clear weather in winter we were keen to head over to the Tongariro Crossing to do a there-and-back to South Crater, picking up the mountain bikers on our way home in the afternoon.

The sun was bright and there was not a cloud in the sky as we parked the van at the Mangatepopo Road End. It was absolutely freezing, especially in the shade. As we meandered up the valley towards Soda Springs, every pool of water we found was frozen up to two cm thick, and further up the valley even the streams were frozen over in places. Large segments of the track also obviously never saw sunshine at that time of year!



We passed very few people, except one really oddly dressed tourist in jeans and chucks, carrying a stereo in her shoulder bag… She must have had a really early start, because she was at Soda Springs the same time we were, about 10am, heading down the valley towards Mangatepopo Hut.




Up the new devils staircase in the sun and cold, we got to the top and sat down to take a morning tea break, enjoying the views across to Mt Taranaki and the sunshine. A decision was made that I would wander into South Crater and try some photography, while the guys were going to try and circumnavigate the bowl of South Crater and pick me up on their way back.

All of a sudden there was a scream from slightly further along the track. We all looked at each other and looked across to the large asian woman who we had all noted walking towards us. We waited 10 seconds or so to see if she was going to get herself up, and when she continued screaming instead we all packed up our gear and headed over to find her moaning in pain, lying in a puddle with her ankle at a very odd angle.

In these conditions, with the cold and a strong breeze, the first concern we had was moving her out of that puddle because none of us had suitable dry clothing to change her into. So we grabbed her under the arms and around the knees and shunted her ever so slightly backwards. She spoke almost no English, so our examination was exceedingly cursory – “where does it hurt” was understood well enough as she pointed at her ankle (which was obviously damaged). “Are you warm enough” generated a response of her grabbing more clothes out of her bag (she was remarkably well prepared compared to many other tourists we had heard stories about).

There were no two ways about it. There was no way we could get her out ourselves. We were at the top of the Devils Staircase with a larger (about 95kg+) woman who spoke very little English and with only a very basic first aid kit. We couldn’t support her ankle enough for her to use it, and we didn’t have enough strength to carry her out, nor could we explain sufficiently assisting her out. So out came the cellphone and a desperate attempt at finding enough signal to make an emergency call.

Our lunch spot had coverage sufficient only to send texts and make emergency calls. Perfect. We pulled out the map and the GPS and got readings off both of them for where we were. Rene thought it a bit odd that I asked for the police when I rang 111, but then had a dawning realisation when I then asked for the northern region search & rescue coordinator. Wonderfully, the woman we got on the phone was an avid tramper and had been in our exact location less than three weeks earlier.

Once we had given them an update on what was happening, there was nothing to do but sit and wait. Unfortunately, none of us had brought a cooker or similar with us, so a hot brew was out of the question. It also wouldn’t have been fair on our injured party as we had been instructed that they were only to be given water. No painkillers, no food in case she needed urgent surgery or similar once in hospital.

After what seemed like an eternity (but was only really a couple of hours) and a couple of false alarms where the aircraft flying towards us was obviously on a tour, the chopper we wanted hovered into view right down at the road end, following the track up to find us, as we had expected they would. The closest landing spot was our morning tea seating area, slightly above us.




During this time we had encountered several other tramping parties, some of whom had decided we obviously had things under control, some who completely ignored the situation, but we were so thankful for the small party of kiwis who gave up their attempt to get over the crossing in order to take a note back to the road end for our patients friend explaining the situation, and making a phone call to confirm our situation to SaR once they were back in cellphone range.

Finally someone else was taking over the situation, and we were all exceedingly glad. By this stage Rene, Paul and I were all wearing every single item of clothing we had brought along for the day and we were still feeling the cold. The cloud was also closing in on us, which had caused us substantial concern about visibility for getting the helicopter in if it had come in any further before it arrived.

After loading our patient into a stretcher and taking a quick photo of the “team”, we carried her over and up to the chopper and they were off to try and find her tramping companion – the one we had seen earlier in the day carrying a stereo and wearing jeans. As for us, we were off back down the track towards our van and its warmth. By the time we had made it down into the valley, the ledge we had been standing on when the helicopter arrived was no longer visible. By the time we were 20 minutes down the valley, even the head of the valley had disappeared into the cloud.





Once back in the van, it was time to wait for the mountain biking boys and then we were back to the lodge in near-darkness to have hot showers, retell our story and rest up before dinner and the all-evening party that is solstice weekend.

Helicopter-tastic, Episode One

8-10 February 2008

Waitewaewae Track, Otaki Forks Road End, Tararua Forest Park

Party: Ray (leader), Sue, Sam, Kerryn, Mark, Antony, Sarah, Carol, Daniel, Me

Friday began much like any other normal weekend tramp. Well, maybe not, given it was sevens weekend and almost everyone else headed towards the railway station was in costume...
On arrival, I greeted Ray and was introduced to the group at large. I started chatting to Mark, on account of his awesome t-shirt (Reads: "Dirty, Filthy, Stinky, Tramp" in big letters down the back), and discovered that he was new to the club and fairly new to Wellington as well. I thought he was kinda cute.

Driving on to the road end, dinner was in Waikanae, which has really only average dinner venues. But it was hot and greasy, so thats all that really matters. Before too long we were at the Otaki Forks road-end setting up camp outside Parawai Lodge.

Mark, Kerryn and I shared one end of a club fly and my ground sheet. Problem was that where I wound up within the tent had a lump in the middle of it, so neither end of the bed was a comfortable way around to sleep - I just cant sleep with my head below my hips. Eventually I gave up and went up onto the hut deck to sleep - far more comfortable, and shaded from the moon!

Saturday morning dawned HOT. And sunny. Real February weather!
We wandered off down the track at a pace that both Kerryn and I struggled with in the heat. At the big swingbridge I was already having dreams of stopping on the way back for a swim. The river was so beautiful, it was an amazing spot.



Once all across the bridge one at a time, we continued on, around the massive slip that keeps moving, and eventually onto the old tramway.


At the old pulley we stopped to have lunch and dry the tent fly, which had got a bit of condensation on it and not enough sunshine. Once we had packed up we were off again towards Waitewaiwai Hut, our destination for the night. We dropped into the river and followed the track in and out of it and up and down around it for a while.


All of a sudden there was a screaming yell from behind me. Sarah had had the track collapse underneath her feet and had slipped partway down the bank, badly twisting her ankle. First aid was administered in the form of cold cloths, elevation and painkillers, and once Sarah was feeling better we made an attempt to start walking her out. After about 15 minutes of difficult scramble due to her being unable to bear any weight on her ankle and the ground (and lack of strong people) making a carry impractical, we stopped on another bank where the river narrowed and discussed options.
The route around the slip was in no way going to be at all negotiable with Sarah unable to walk. It wasnt a "track" so much as "goat-track" - narrow, steep and slippery. There was no way we could get even one support person alongside Sarah through there. The river had good wide flats, but could also possibly require a series of swims to get back to Otaki Forks, and it was a river that got much larger as you got closer to the forks, and with two young boys on the tramp it wasnt really a suitable option.

In the end, Ray set off his PLB, which was an old 121.5 with 3-years "expired" batteries, left his food with us for the evening and took Sam for a rapid walk back to the road end to call for assistance from the ranger station. The rest of us got out cookers and billies and made a brew while we waited to see what would happen. We set up two tent flies alongside the track (in an area so narrow that the party that came through the next day looked around them and wondered WHERE the tents had been!), threw on warm clothes and generally made ourselves comfortable, telling stories and sharing jokes.


Suddenly, I could hear a helicopter. Surely not. The beacon had only been on for two hours, and there was no way Ray and Sam could be back at the road end yet! But yes, it was a chopper and it was looking for us - turns out an aircraft had picked up our signal within about 20 minutes of the beacon being set off!

Next thing we knew, a man had been dropped from the sky and was turning to talk to us about what was going on.

Within 45 minutes of that, Sarah had been airlifted out and we were all of a sudden on our own again, waiting out the night alongside the track. The idea of walking back to the road end, or at least back to the old steam-engine pulley, was very briefly voiced, but there would have been a risk that we would have wound up walking in the dark. Funnily enough, walking on to the hut held even less appeal by this stage!

Bed was early since there was nothing else to do, and was not a bad nights sleep, all told. Yes, my bed was on a slope, and yes, I spent most of my night with one leg hooked around a punga stump to stop me sliding down the hill, but I actually woke feeling refreshed, which was lovely.

In the morning, we were up fairly early. After leaving a note for the other party, we divvied up Sarahs pack and wandered off, stopping for a good while at the point where the track leaves the river, in case Ray and Sam had walked back in to meet us. After a while we decided they obviously hadn't and continued on. The day was muggy and threatening to rain, which it finally did once we were past the big swing bridge.

The swim at the road-end carpark was divinely cold and welcoming! Mark, Ray and I were in the van, which was waiting for Stuart and his party to come out from a harder tramp. Joyously, they had junkfood to share on the way home!