\u201cHe was lucky to have his mobile phone,\u201d Henwood said. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe called his family, and once his son raised the alarm, emergency services were able to pinpoint his location.\u201d<\/p>\n
The man was found to be only about 100 metres from Crosbies Hut. <\/p>\n
A helicopter was deployed and reached the area, but was unable to land due to deteriorating weather conditions.<\/p>\n
The Pinnacle Track swing bridge, near Kauaeranga Valley. Photo \/ Russell Street<\/p>\n
Further enquiries by Police Search and Rescue, working with the Department of Conservation, identified that a tramping party \u2013 a mother and her two teenage children \u2013 was staying at Crosbies Hut. <\/p>\n
They were contacted and asked to help.<\/p>\n
A second helicopter was sent in, but it too was unable to land as weather conditions worsened.<\/p>\n
The mother and her children left Crosbies Hut and, within a short time, located the elderly man. They formed a human heat circle to help warm him before returning with him to the hut to await rescue.<\/p>\n
At first light, with the assistance of Land Search and Rescue teams, police were able to extract the man from the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was very grateful to see rescuers,\u201d Henwood said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an uncomfortably close call. He was very close to not being able to continue, and if it weren\u2019t for the family staying nearby, things could have been very different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Henwood said the incident was a reminder for people heading into the bush or onto tramping tracks to be prepared for any eventuality.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important to wear appropriate clothing and take food and water even for a short walk \u2013 especially if you\u2019re not familiar with the area,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cEmergency Locator Beacons are cheap to hire and are capable of saving your life, even when there\u2019s no cell phone reception.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe was lucky to have his mobile phone,\u201d Henwood said. \u201cHe called his family, and once his son…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[125678,74,5831,6743,1061,30705,22506,32255,125679,42,3191,25902,16420,125677,809,424,5836,43,1118,6507,17162,54552,10706,40,38,41,39,108852,2217,6123],"class_list":["post-205822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-80yearold","tag-after","tag-alive","tag-became","tag-children","tag-circle","tag-coromandel","tag-familys","tag-formed","tag-headlines","tag-heat","tag-hiking","tag-human","tag-kauaeranga","tag-keep","tag-life","tag-lost","tag-news","tag-of","tag-overnight","tag-saved","tag-saves","tag-teenage","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-tramper","tag-valley","tag-while"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}