Jamie who got lost from Mt solitare

[ninjapuppet]

Heres a link for those of you who dont follow wild magazine
http://www.wild.com.au/feature/article/surviving-solitary/


Its about young jamie last year who got lost in the blue mountains for 12 days. Today I went up there and tried to retrace some of his steps with my Jenolan and Jamison contoured maps + compass.

Thought it was a pretty fun thing to do, and I deliberately left my gps off. I find a gps kinda takes some fun away from going off track since you know exactly where you are down to the correct 5m radius and my senses tend to shut off abit. I enjoyed the heightened sense of awareness required when you dont have a gps.

Anyway, i thought the walk was pretty easy. However I was well fed, well equiped and knew where I was. Just couldnt imagine how scary it would be to be up there without a map and no food. I really wonder what I'd do without food for 12 days like that.

[johnw]

I'm way behind in my reading and only finished that story in Wild on Sunday. Do you mean that you found the going easy once you left the track or only while on it? I think I know the "sucker track" that may have led him down into Cedar Valley, as it fooled me on one occasion. I fairly quickly realised the error and we retraced our steps. He would have had zero local knowledge however. I found it curious that he didn't follow up with publishing his account back in England, after selling the story to the media here.

[juxtaposer]

Jamie got so much attention for such a bad bushwalk.

[melinda]

Heh juxtaposer,
What do you mean,

Jamie got so much attention for such a bad bushwalk.

A trip through Cedar Creek and Bunba Yaka Creek is something that will never be forgotten!
Leeches, lawyer vine, leeches, lawyer vine, impenetrable bush, leeches, spectacular cliffline, leeches ..........
It was awesome!

[juxtaposer]

I love the leeches, I love the lawyer vines, I love the impenetrable scrub, but 12 days in the middle of winter with no food, fire or blanket and not the faintest idea of where you are is in my mind a bad bushwalk. Although, I think Jamie's incompetence is why he survived: he did not exhaust himself early in the piece but kept within the small energy budget he had available each day. If he had charged about too much in the first couple of days he would have soon come to a dead stop, literally.

[melinda]

Hi juxtaposer,
I think you may well be right!
Was trying to be funny but sometimes humour doesn't come across very well when it is written.

[juxtaposer]

Of course, I was only joking too, Melinda. Long live Jamie!

[juxtaposer]

Another thing about Jamie. For a few days while he was on his Cedar Creek odyssey, I was camped out on the Mt Hay Range, but because of the bad weather had to spend most of the time holed up in a cave out there. It was constant heavy fog and cloud cover, but with only occasional drizzle it was not really all that wet or cold, even at night (for the middle of winter that is). Had the nights been cloudless the lows would have been more severe and Jamie might not have survived them. Still, I'm proud of the lad. He did what Bear Grylls and his camera crews only pretend to do. Bear should engage Jamie as a consultant, and learn how economy of effort is the real way to survive, rather than poncing around biting the *&^%$#@! off spiders.

[Lindsay]

I think young Jamie could easily give that *&%$#! idiot Bear Grylls some pointers.

[Vern]

Go easy on the Bear, he's actually quite a humble family guy who just happens to be the host of an entertaining TV series. I've just read two of his books and would thoroughly recommend them. Much better stories than that of poor old Jamie!

[juxtaposer]

I'm sure Bear is a good soul and his books are great reading. I will not participate in a barney on Bear other than to say that to get any nutrition out of eating Saint Andrews Cross spiders you would probably have to swallow about thirty of them, by which time your body, reacting to the toxins, would retch them all up. I think every good boy scout needs to be aware of that.