MISSING ALPINE PARTY

Evening Star, Issue 21640, 8 February 1934, Page 15

MISSING ALPINE PARTY

LOCATED BY PLANE ALL SAFE [Per United Press Association.] CHRISTCHURCH, February 7. Messrs M'Bride, Dickie, and Spcden, the missing alpine party (eight days overdue from a three weeks’ trip into the mountainous country of the West Coast), were discovered this afternoon by Captain J. C. Mercer, instructor of the Canterbury Aero Club, at the, junction of the Arawata and Waipara Rivers. The men had food for two or three days, but were twenty miles from the nearest settlement, in country so rough that it would have taken them about a week to walk out. Captain Mercer landed his plane «n the shingle bed of the Arawata and carried two of the men to Okiiru, and will return for the third this morning, tie had previously flown over that country. He left Christchurch about 0 o’clock this morning to make a search from the air. He lifted food supplies at Gore and set out for Queenstown. Captain Mercer made light of the difficulties of the search when speaking from the Franz Josef Hotel this evening, “ 1 found them easily enough,” he said. “ They were at the junction of the Arawata and Waipara Rivers. 1 expected they would be somewhere about there.’’ After having located the men Captain Mercer dropped food supplies which he had taken in from Gore, and later dropped some messages. He then flew to Okuru and attempted to got messages away to stop the search parties that had sot out from Gore and Invercargill. Flying back to where he had discovered tho men he landed on the shingle of the river. The men had mistaken their way and had followed the wrong river. Captain Mercer said they had encountered floods in a number of places, but were all in good health. Their food was not exhausted, though the supply was running low.