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Arapiles Benightment 2-Oct-2010 At 9:49:47 PM undercling mike

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In parallel, those of us in the campground started getting worried and maybe about an hour or an hour and a half after dark some of us went up towards central gully to yell out and see if we got a response. It was very hard to hear what was being said due to the wind but after much yelling by various people and faffing around with a megaphone we got that they were OK (not injured) but wanted help and were stuck. They were also pointing their torch towards us, but in the dark I couldn't pinpoint exactly what part of the cliff it was coming from. In hindsight perhaps I should have spent some more time trying to figure this out but they didn't point the torch at us for long as I think they returned to the alcove to shelter as much as possible from the wind. Anyway, we initially dismissed the idea of going up Ali's to look for them as we weren't sure we would reach them this way so we decided to look for them by walking in to the summit area from the road. We decided that we would split up and one group would immediately head up the central gully track to get to the summit area to try and locate them while others would head back to camp and get extra warm gear, climbing gear, food and water and then head up to join the search. I immediately headed up the central gully track with one other who had walked out from The Eighth that afternoon and had a good bearing of the summit area. At some point while we were walking around the summit area I saw the message from Dave saying he had been asked to call for a rescue. After yelling down various parts of the cliff we could hear them from the top of Dunes buttress and identified that they were beneath Missing Link. We confirmed that they were OK but were lost and needed help to get down. At this point I knew we could get to them (at least via Ali's) and took the decision to message Dave back and tell him to call off the rescue (however it turns out the police and Arapiles rescue were already mobilised). We then headed back towards the road and met up with the others who had brought the gear up (variously by car and walking up central gully). Between us we weren't sure exactly how to get to the Missing Link area from the top except that the guidebook indicated that it should be possible, so we split again with the plan that three (myself included) would drive back down to camp and then go up Ali's to reach them while the other five would attempt to get to them from the top.

We got back to the Pines and were preparing to head to Ali's when we ran into the police officers and I believe Keith Lockwood. I told them that we had located the lost party at Missing Link and the police officers indicated that they had information to say the missing climbers were at the Pharos. I have no idea how they got this info and can only assume they misheard the location during the initial emergency call to Natimuk police due to the bad connection. We were talking in the carpark for a while and a call came through to the police to say that the lost party had been reached by our other friends and they were being walked out. We then drove back up to the summit area to pick them up. When we picked them up the time was 10:30.

So there's the story, sorry it's so long. Judge away...