Death on Mt Aicken

Murray Cullen told the Coroner that if there had been a marked route leading to Mt Aicken in Arthurs Pass then Elizabeth Thomson would not have died.

See this article from the Christchurch Press in Stuff News:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/0,2106,3605104a6009,00.html

Of course this puts DoC on the back foot. But let's be fair. There are reasons DoC hasn't marked the route on Mt Aicken. The same reasons apply to why the route is not marked on Mt Cassidy, where another visiting tramper died. The same reasons apply to the lack of marking that resulted in the death of a local tramper who went down the wrong scree from Avalanche Peak to the Crow valley. I would even go back to the death of young Nigel Popplewell in the Otehake, only a short distance from a perfectly useable swingbridge.

There are so many examples.

However it's difficult to pull them all together because in each case there's an attempt to put the blame on the unfortunate victim. So we tend to just see them all as one-offs.

I've been collecting information on every back-country 'incident' I've seen reported in the media for the past fifteen years. I'm identifying some clear patterns.

A lot of people get off course on popular routes because of a lack of marking. Some of them die.

DoC isn't to blame however. DoC can only do what it's funded for. And there are some people arguing against DoC being funded to do this work.

I've even heard some old crusties in the Christchurch Tramping Club complaining about the route DoC marked to Avalanche Peak from the Arthurs Pass village. And this is despite them knowing that people had gone off route and died there before it was done.