Heaphy Track 'only for the fit’

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33700, 25 November 1974, Page 19

Heaphy Track 'only for the fit’

(Neto Zealand Press Association) NELSON. Only fit and well-equipped people should attempt to walk the Heaphy Track, said the Golden Bay District Coroner, Mr J. M. Cashman.

The track had been overglamourised, and it was quite incorrect to describe it as an easy walk for people of all ages, he said during an inquest into the death of a 19-year-old Christchurch student, lan David Leathern. “Creeks in the area rise very rapidly, and he was swept away in attempting to cress one of them,’’ the Coroner said. “His is the second disappearance I have had to consider in this area during the last year, the other being that of Mrs Roselyn Rae Tilbury, whose body wa.s never found,’ 1 said the Coroner.

Also a number of people had been carried or assisted out of the area because of injury or exhaustion.

The track was a tramp of more than 40 miles, through an area subject to torrential rain and, at times, snow. “To experience these conditions can be physically exhausting,” he said. “It is not a Sunday afternoon stroll, and above all persons walking the Heaphy Track should always tramp in groups, and should not leave their group,” he said. “Until these things are realised and observed by every person making the Heaphy Track tramp, further fatalities will be a distinct possibility.” Mr Cashman found that lan David Leathern died in Cave Creek, on the Heaphy Track, on April 21, 1973, while crossing the creek.