Lost or injured in the backcountry? You may think it could never happen to you, but then that sounds like famous last words. With mobile phone-sized personal locator beacons becoming more common, why tempt fate when the press of a button can have you whisked from the hills within hours after disaster strikes
Rose Pearson is not quite one of those people who thought it would never happen to her. Her preparations for tramps and mountaineering trips include $700 spent on a personal locator beacon. She considers herself experienced in the outdoors. She is young and fit, and that, perhaps, was her undoing. On a 10-day tramp through the Garden of Eden, or to climb Mt Aspiring, a PLB should be considered an essential piece of equipment. But when she set off on a simple, four-day hike with her brother, she calculated no real risks in the way of avalanches, rock falls or river crossings. Besides, she reckoned she could easily get out from any point of their planned route in a day to call for help if the unlikely happened. The problem was the unlikely didn’t include the possibility they could both be seriously injured and left unable to walk. In the end all it took was an unexpected patch of snow, a mere kilometre from the hut at the end of their second day. As they ventured across, it turned icy and without crampons, or even ice axes, they soon realised they were in trouble. But now going back or forwards was difficult. In some ways it was a text book accident. Dusk was looming. They were rushing. Suddenly Pearson found herself tumbling down the slope. As she gathered speed she bounced off rocks and over humps. Her shoes were ripped from her feet as she desperately tried to stop herself. Eventually she slid to a stop, her barely conscious brother slumped like a rag doll beside her. Sprawled across her pack, her pelvis was moving in ways it never had before, grating and crunching at numerous severe breaks. As the pair huddled together through the night on a ledge barely wide enough for their bums, her brother bombarded her with the same questions over and over again. What happened? Where were they? Did they have a PLB? “That last one cut me to my core with guilt and regret,” says Pearson. “I could only answer ‘no Nelson, it’s in the car. I’m sorry’.” Pearson had five long days and cold nights, during which her brother developed frostbite in his feet, to think about that decision before they were finally rescued and flown to hospital. LandSAR chief executive Harry Maher sums it up succinctly: “People with PLBs simply get rescued, on the spot.” [caption id="attachment_5233" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]

