A rescue team walked through heavy snow on Saturday night to reach a family stranded in the Mount Field National Park in Tasmania’s south.<\/p>\n
The family, two adults and three children, had set out on a planned day walk on Saturday, but weather conditions changed and became dangerous.<\/p>\n
Just after 4:30pm the family called police when they were no longer able to access the walking track after heavy snow.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The family spent the night at Newdegate Hut. (Supplied: Tasmania Police)<\/p>\n
Search coordinator Callum Herbert said the walkers were advised to return to nearby Newdegate Hut and wait for the rescue team to arrive.<\/p>\n
He said there was about 30 centimetres of snow in the area.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There was about 30 centimetres of snow in the area overnight on Saturday. (Supplied: Tasmania Police)<\/p>\n
“Due to the extreme weather conditions, the helicopter wasn’t able to reach the area, so a search and rescue team of police and Ambulance Tasmania wilderness paramedics was sent in on foot,” Mr Herbert said.<\/p>\n
“The rescue team reached the walkers at the hut shortly before midnight, finding them all safe, but cold and wet.<\/p>\n
“Given their condition and the hazardous environment, including strong winds and nearly one foot [30cm] of snow, we determined it was unsafe to walk them out during the night.<\/p>\n
“Medical assistance, food and sleeping bags were provided overnight to ensure everyone could remain safely sheltered.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The rescue helicopter was used on Sunday morning once conditions allowed. (Supplied: Tasmania Police)<\/p>\n
The rescue helicopter was sent in on Sunday morning once conditions allowed.<\/p>\n
The family was then taken to the park’s visitor centre about 10:30am.<\/p>\n
“We are thankful the walkers were able to reach emergency services by phone yesterday, or the outcome could easily have been far worse,” Mr Herbert said.Low snow in southern Tasmania<\/p>\n
Hobart woke to a mountain covered in snow on Sunday morning. (ABC News: Matt Growcott)<\/p>\n
Snow settled to around 400-500 metres in the early hours of Sunday morning about the south of the state.<\/p>\n
Hobart’s Kunanyi\/Mount Wellington received a healthy dump of snow.<\/p>\n
Another cold night is forecast for Sunday, with a low of 3 degrees Celsius expected in Hobart and 1C in Launceston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A rescue team walked through heavy snow on Saturday night to reach a family stranded in the Mount…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,10801,10802,44,1157,10803,8539,2801,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-9087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-mount-field","tag-mt-field","tag-news","tag-rescue","tag-snow","tag-tas","tag-tasmania","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}