Thread: Lost in the bush

This just a copy and past from my Facebook post a couple of years ago, a bit of a misadventure with the girlfriend:

Here's a few details for those of you who'd heard we'd activated the PLB over the weekend but were unsure on exactly what happened. Massive thanks to the Methven SAR and the Westpac chopper!

Saturday evening we'd made our way down into a valley in the Hakatere, on the way down I'd been keeping an eye on the route out back down the valley to the hut where we were staying and had left the bulk of our gear, it all looked pretty straight forward and easy going.
Late in the evening we shot a pig and a spiker, after quickly butchering them we tried to make it out before dark as we knew there was about an hours hike down the river flats to the hut. Half way out it got dark and out came the torches. Not long after that we reached a gorge which we hadn't realised was there, we got through one section but then hit another steeper rougher section in which I slipped off a rock face and ended up falling into the river. At this point we decided we couldn't get through and to turn around and find another route out. I also dumped the meat and decided to deal with it the following day after we'd gotten out. Further back up river our torches were dying and we couldn't find any spare batteries. We also realised we couldn't see far enough up the hill to judge wether there was a route out or if we were going to run into more bluffs so we decided the safest option was to try and make some form of camp. This was around 11pm, I was freezing from the dip in the river and we both had wet pants and boots from the river crossings, however we did have spare dry layers on top.
All we had for shelter was my pack liner and a survival blanket which when we opened up we discovered the heat reflective coating was gone so it was completely useless.
By 2am we both had hyperthermia setting in and it was getting colder. We knew if we got any worse we were in serious trouble. After a lot of debating we decided by activating the PLB we'd rather have a chopper turn up in two hours time than get to two hours time and realise we were in serious trouble and then activate the PLB and have to wait even longer.
Unfortunately half an hour later the weather closed in and it started snowing. Turns out it was bad enough the Westpac chopper decided it was too dangerous to fly in.
Luckily we managed to keep ourselves in a stable condition till morning. At 7am we decided to start trying to warm up and by 7:30 we still hadn't seen or heard anything, at which point we made a plan to start moving and get out of there. I left Janny to have some food while I went back down river to recover the meat which is when the chopper flew overtop of us, and into the next valley where they located our foot prints from the day before and thought we may have fallen off a bluff up in the tops. Just after I got the meat I ran into SAR who had bashed through the scrub over top of the gorge. They radioed ahead and had Janny and the dog picked up by the chopper.
SAR decided they weren't keen to head back through the gorge even in the daylight, that gives some insight as to how rough it was, we found a route up out of the valley then dropped back down to the hut a couple of hours later where Janny was still recovering.

The worst part about the whole situation was seeing on the way out that had we made it through the final section of the gorge there was only a couple of corners left before we were back at the hut.


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