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General Climbing Discussion

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Arapiles Benightment 2-Oct-2010 At 9:49:24 PM undercling mike

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Hi all, the climbers who got benighted are my friends and I was involved in locating them on the night, so I'll put up my version of the story.

The climbers were a party of three on Syrinx and the team consisted of a moderately experienced leader, a beginner leader and a beginner. They set out in the morning and took all day to complete the climb, they topped out just as darkness was falling. None of the climbers had been to the bluffs area or the summit area before but they had the guidebook and they attempted to reach the Ali's descent. Between them they had just one hand held torch (apparently they lost a headtorch from their pack earlier in the day). Eventually, after some scrambling around in the dark, they made it to the Ali's descent but they were unsure of where they were and were having difficulty identifying any landmarks from the guidebook (despite that the torch they had was significantly more powerful than typical headtorches). They said they descended down Ali's until it seemed to them that the rock dropped away at a steeper angle but they were unable to locate the chains or rap point. I would guess that they had reached the base of John's pinnacle at this point and were close to where the chains start but for whatever reason they didn't find them. I think they were quite uncomfortable with the scrambling to reach this point given that they weren't sure they were in the right place and they just had one hand torch. They decided to go back up and ended up at the Missing Link area. I'm not sure exactly when they decided to call for help but apparently they were getting very cold once they stopped moving. I'm also not sure exactly what clothing they had but one member of the party had set out in t-shirt and shorts (this was obviously bad judgment), while the other members were in long sleeves/pants. They had a jacket in the bag which was given to Mr t-shirt/shorts and they huddled in a little alcove, which I think gave scant protection from the wind.

At some point they decided they were getting dangerously cold and needed help, they probably tried to call us in the campground but none of us had reception so they called 000 and were connected to the police in Natimuk. The connection was poor but they tried to describe where they thought they were by saying they had climbed Syrinx and thought they were somewhere behind Bard. I don't know how much info got through in that call as it dropped out and for whatever reason they weren't able to reestablish a connection to emergency services themselves. They next called Dave and got a message through to him and had him call 000 on their behalf.

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