Huge shout out to Land Search and Rescue.
With three friends I was excited to be tramping into Herepai Hut in the northern Tararua for an overnight adventure, when I slipped in the mud, lost my balance and with a heavy pack overbalancing me, landed very heavily on my arm on a big tree root.
I immediately knew my arm was broken as it was at a funny angle and I couldn’t move it or use it. Lying in the mud wondering how to even get up, we realised that the hi-viz we could see through the forest was in fact a Land Search and Rescue team on a training exercise, and who we had bumped into earlier in the day. How lucky were we that they had chosen the same route up as us.
My friend alerted them to our real time incident, and they were on the scene within minutes, immediately taking charge and sorting the situation out with no fuss.
They splintered my arm, took my pack, redistributed gear amongst our group and made sure I was warm enough. They gave us great confidence in working out what to do next. This was of course to return to the road end, three hours away at this point in the walk, as there was still enough daylight to safely do so, and because the rain was setting in and there would be little chance of a helicopter rescue with the forecast for the next 24 hours.
In fact they insisted on carrying my pack and walking with us back out down the slippery and increasingly wet and muddy track, taking us all the way out to the car and ensuring we were warm and able to drive safely off to hospital. I did feel rather embarrassed to hand back the very muddy and wet sling and splint they had made out of a laminated map (very effective), but I figured it was more important they had them to use another time!
The result was a compound double fracture requiring traction to reset and a very long night, but at least I had some good pain relief on hand at the hospital, and was obviously was much more comfortable than I would have been in the Hut in pain, nauseous from that, and unsure how I would be able to walk out.
I am so grateful to the Land Search and Rescue team, for their help and their guidance, ensuring we made the right decision and got safely out. I was so lucky they were so quickly on hand, both to splinter my arm and assess the situation.
I am also not sure if I am being honest with myself that I would have made the right decision to set off my PLB if they hadn’t happened to be at hand, as I was thinking it was only an arm and that at least I could still walk. But as they pointed out to me as they helped me walkout (not as straight forward as I might have presumed – two arms really help with balance!), it was much easier and safer for everyone that I could walk out in daylight and not risk being stuck potentially for multiple nights in pain and making it so much harder for anyone to get in to assist me. This wouldn’t have been at all fair or easy for my friends to manage either. This was a really valuable and luckily pretty cheap and easy lesson for me, to seek help earlier rather than later when things become a bigger drama and more people would be put at unnecessary risk.
We are so lucky as trampers to not only have such an amazing landscape to explore, but to have such well trained, competent and compassionate Land Search and Rescue volunteers who give up their time so willingly to help keep us safe.
Thank you so much Land Search and Rescue, and I am incredulous at what you do for no cost to us trampers – if you can, please consider a donation so that they can continue to provide such care when needed.
Tags: Rescue
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