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Lost

Lost


Postby rodderss » Fri Oct 15, 2021 7:52 am

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Re: Lost

Postby al78 » Fri Oct 15, 2021 9:59 am

The Cairngorm plateau is a bad plase to get lost and disorientated and can't point yourself in the right direction. Aside from the possibility of atrocious weather, if you walk down to the wrong glen you could be faced with a very very long walk back to your car in a state of exhaustion. This is good advocacy for taking map and compass (and the knowledge of how to use them), spare clothing, spare food, torch and whistle just in case.
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Re: Lost

Postby NickyRannoch » Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:26 am

Not a criticism but I'm genuinely interested as to what went wrong on day 2. If the report is correct and he made it to the Dee you are on good paths and and an hour or two from shelter in most directions.

We can all get disorientated and make poor decisions so, as I say, never a criticism, but would be interesting to know the route of where he came off MacDui and where he was found.
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Re: Lost

Postby iain_atkinson_1986 » Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:39 am

NickyRannoch wrote:Not a criticism but I'm genuinely interested as to what went wrong on day 2. If the report is correct and he made it to the Dee you are on good paths and and an hour or two from shelter in most directions.

We can all get disorientated and make poor decisions so, as I say, never a criticism, but would be interesting to know the route of where he came off MacDui and where he was found.


That's what I was thinking. I'm sure there are details the article doesn't cover and 'Ben Macui area' is extremely vague but he looks to be a map fiend and the article states he's experienced. Unless he was absolutely exhausted, dehydrated or spent a lot of time looking for his pal on day 2, 12 hours of daylight should have been plenty time to pick up a track and start heading out.

At least he came out of it unscathed.
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Re: Lost

Postby jmarkb » Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:44 am

Maybe he was relying on his buddy to do the navigation and had no idea where he was?
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Re: Lost

Postby NickyRannoch » Fri Oct 15, 2021 11:11 am

I'm not being nosey but at work we write accident reports to learn from mistakes and near misses.

I'd like to see if we could get the same published for incidents like this.

In my head I'm flippantly saying enough like, well it wod be easy to get out of that, but it obviously wasn't. So for my own learning I would be interested to know what I'm overlooking.

I'm also taking the report with a pinch of salt. The Ben Macdui area to Corrour guides you towards thinking about the Tailor Burn but every chance they were on the other side and if he isn't coming across paths, other people and his rescuers found him from the other side of a river I'm inclined to think he has got lost around Glen Geusachan but obviously I could ne way off.
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Re: Lost

Postby jmarkb » Fri Oct 15, 2021 1:09 pm

The BMC maintains an incident and near miss reporting service at https://www.incidents.thebmc.co.uk/responses but contributions are entirely voluntary.
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Re: Lost

Postby jupe1407 » Fri Oct 15, 2021 1:52 pm

If the clag's down and you're in the wide open spaces in the 'Gorms it's pretty easy for these things to happen. As regards to the following day, I can only assume he was hungry, disoriented and anxious.

Heartwarming to see the posts on Facebook invaded by the usual moonhowlers demanding payment, and insurance premiums from behind their armchairs though. Some things never change :roll:
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Re: Lost

Postby NickyRannoch » Fri Oct 15, 2021 3:56 pm

jmarkb wrote:The BMC maintains an incident and near miss reporting service at https://www.incidents.thebmc.co.uk/responses but contributions are entirely voluntary.


Cheers. I'd have thought MRTs kept reports but maybe they would have personal data on them.and just for internal use
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Re: Lost

Postby NickyRannoch » Fri Oct 15, 2021 3:57 pm

jupe1407 wrote: Facebook


There's your first mistake
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Re: Lost

Postby jmarkb » Fri Oct 15, 2021 5:15 pm

NickyRannoch wrote:
jmarkb wrote:The BMC maintains an incident and near miss reporting service at https://www.incidents.thebmc.co.uk/responses but contributions are entirely voluntary.


Cheers. I'd have thought MRTs kept reports but maybe they would have personal data on them.and just for internal use


There is an annual statistics report e.g. https://www.scottishmountainrescue.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SMR_Statistics_Report_2020_v5-pages.pdf, but I don't think details of individual rescues are made public.
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Re: Lost

Postby iain_atkinson_1986 » Sat Oct 16, 2021 9:02 am

Both guys were just on Breakfast on BBC for those interested (I assume will be shown again or on catchup). Sounds like day 2 was a navigation disaster.
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Re: Lost

Postby jmarkb » Sat Oct 16, 2021 10:00 am

iain_atkinson_1986 wrote:Both guys were just on Breakfast on BBC for those interested (I assume will be shown again or on catchup). Sounds like day 2 was a navigation disaster.


Thanks for the pointer - just watched that.

Sounds like:
He had a phone which died early on day 2 and a back up charger which failed, but no paper map (not clear if his pal had a paper map).
His pal was carrying a tent, but he had no survival bag.
On the second day he got himself down to Glen Dee, but turned left towards White Bridge instead of right towards Corrour (that's my guess, it wasn't 100% clear in the interview).

I can understand how these things happen - you want to reduce weight as much as possible for a backpacking/bothying trip, so you share the gear between you, but then getting separated can leave you without the appropriate gear to get yourself safely off the hill or survive a night out.
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Re: Lost

Postby WalkWithWallace » Sat Oct 16, 2021 10:01 am

iain_atkinson_1986 wrote:Both guys were just on Breakfast on BBC for those interested (I assume will be shown again or on catchup). Sounds like day 2 was a navigation disaster.


Just watched it, for anyone getting it on catch up skip to 8:50am.

It sounds like they were not quite as equipped as they made out to be? No torch, no survival bag and no mention of navigation like map and compass and or GPS. :?
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Re: Lost

Postby Bastonjock » Sat Oct 16, 2021 10:14 am

I've just watched BBC news twice to try and learn from this ,I'm very new to this activity , the chap said he made a navigation mistake turning left at a split in the path instead of right ,I was under the impression that you stick together and do not separate .
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