Scottish orienteering girl missing in Norway?

[DIDSCO]

Saw on the news that a scottish orienteering girl went missing last night in Halden? Apparently a big search was started, including a helicopter, and luckily the girl was found. Wondered who it was? any ideas.

[mharky]

http://www.orienteering.is/sar-action-at-camp-norway.4660570.html

[mharky]

...and I bet if she won something they would have said she was British...

[DIDSCO]

if she was english she wouldn't have got lost

[Tatty]

So, has she been found safe and well. Hope so!

[frog]

Poor lass, I hope we don't find out, although suspect it will filter through th o grapevine.
The coach needs to stress the need for carrying spare batteries in future as they're probably feeling a bit daft too if most of the participants batteries were getting low and they hadn't insisted they carried spares.

[Gross]

And don't forget the spare shoe laces in case one breaks, and the first aid kit & the emergency rations and the rucsac to carry it all in.......

[frog]

Agree it can become OTT and I did once go out with a guy who would never go for a walk in the hills without carrying a ginormous ruck sack "just in case". As I was hill running at the time and just venturing out with small bum bag this seemed completely OTT. A set of spare batteries shouldn't weigh much though.

[Scott]

And don't forget the spare shoe laces in case one breaks, and the first aid kit & the emergency rations and the rucsac to carry it all in.......

Don't be pathetic. You can get cheap back-up headtorches that weigh less than an ounce and which will provide more than enough light to get back to assembly if your main torch dies. Whistles are even cheaper and weigh even less. There's not really any excuse for going out at night without one or the other (or preferably both - hopefully the girl in this case at least had a whistle).

[mharky]

they're probably feeling a bit daft too if most of the participants batteries were getting low and they hadn't insisted they carried spares.

er... they had all finished their training, without their lamps running-out. They were then asked to get their kit back on and start searching, and that's when their batteries got low...

I don't really see why you'd carry a spare battery, if you know yours wont last, then why are you using it. Carry a spare 3LED lamp, so if you smash your mainlamp in, or rip the cables right out then you still have a light source. Plugging a fresh battery into a broken lamp aint gonna do much...

I think as it was an international orienteering camp they probably expected everyone to be well prepared and of a good standard...

[King Penguin]

Glad she's OK, and it sounds as if she did the sensible thing in waiting rather than blundering around in complete darkness, with the risk of going off-map (making the serach much harder and bigger) or injuring herself.

[harry]

She was off the map. You can read a fuller story from the search perspective at my blog.
http://helvino.blogspot.com/2009/12/dra ... -from.html

Here is the map from the training:
http://haldensk.no/dok/filer/resultater ... t_kula.jpg
She had used an hour to number 3 and decided to come back to the parking but then made a 180 degree error and then ran out of light and waited at a high point off the map to the North somewhere.

Mark is right, I don't think many of us were carrying spare headtorches or had spare batteries with us. I don't even know how much time I really have on my battery since I often switch modes, I just know it will be fine for a 90 min training. None of us were particularly prepared for the possibility of a missing person.

In the end it was all fine in fact I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Norwegians were happy they could log some more training time at I1.

[Spookster]

Wow, that's proper night orienteering training! Thanks for the story, and glad it all ended ok.

[harry]

Yeah. It was relevant for Norwegian Night Champs which I am planning to run. Seems like I need quite a few more night trainings before April 16th! I was also quite jealous of all these new fangled headtorches. But as you can see these details didn't seem so important as the evening went on. Most people at the training myself included were the self obsessed types, getting back from their training, change, dry baselayer, warm clothes, jogging/ change socks and shoes, get some food and water, get warm, discuss routes + ideally leave pretty fast> shower> dinner. Nothing-will-stand-in-the-way-of-my-perfect-training-weekend. Then bamm, someone is missing, most people snapped out of the mentality pretty fast, wet shoes went on, dinner was forgotten, different adrenaline. (Most people.)

[FromTheGrassyKnoll]

The coach needs to stress the need for carrying spare batteries in future

I never carried a spare until one day.. it was Halloween (true story) my main light failed in the forest...

A spare tiny LED weighs almost nothing and at least would show you your compass needle and a patch of map to look at.