G'day all
I've only once been lost to the point where I was ready to start looking for an
overnight shelter. It was in the New England National Park, east of Armidale in
NSW. There is a walk that begins on the clifftop and winds down to the valley
floor. From here there are lots of tracks leading to some long walks (several
days). I only planned to walk down, then along a bit, then back up - a few km
and an hour or two. The park brochure showed the tracks and mentioned that they
were all signposted by the original ranger back in 1827 (or there abouts). What
it didn't say was that lots of tracks were not shown and that the signs were
still the original ones, now broken, faded, covered with moss, missing etc.
The inevitable happened. I took a couple of wrong turns, the fog rolled in,
then steady rain and darkess began to descend. No-one else was around. No-one
really knew where I was and I wouldn't have been missed until late the following
day. A compass or GPS would have been fairly useless because my way back was up
rather than NSE or W. With a GPS I could have saved each track intersection I
suppose and retraced my steps. Eventually I scrambled back up the cliff top and
found a track back to the car. My 1-2 hour stroll turned into a 5 hour
struggle. I didn't even see any birds.
I think the main thing I did wrong was to venture out in the conditions which
were obviously deteriorating.
Cheers
Steve
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Steve Clark
Hamilton, Victoria, 3300
http://members.datafast.net.au/clarkja/sw_birds.htm
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