Bushcrafter found dead in Highland bothy

[adestu]

gentlemen and ladies
this is truly a tragic incident that regardless of media facts and what ifs can only be seen as tragic and deepest sympathy go to the family and friends.
as some of you have said there has been some members considering or are doing something simular. if you know these people out there and have means of contact call them or go see them.another loss would be to much to bear .

 

[filcon]

I,ve went to bothies for years and its a different ball game from bushcraft and wild camping. There has been a lot of people die over the years. Staying in the Mountain bothies is different, its nothing you can learn from tv programmes or a thread on a computer. I,ve had to feed, render first aid, lend clothing, heat up help ill prepared adventurers.
I love the bothies don,t be dismayed, but they have to be treated with repect.
A bothy is a place of refuge in usually remote mountainous, challenging areas where you can rest and shelter from extreme weather.

Heres a link http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/.

phill

 

[gan_pi]

Sad news. as a motorsport fan its not the first time I've learnt of people dying through doing something they love.

I grew up in in Derbyshire and I can only imagine the promise the chap must have held in his thoughts as he did his preparation. I'm signed up for the Canadian expedition later this year, this news hasn't made me want to quit, but it has made me think more about the gear I'll be taking. eg Saving a few quid here and there for a cheaper fleece doesn't compare to hypothermia.

My thoughts are with his family.

 

[jonajuna]

I grew up in in Derbyshire and I can only imagine the promise the chap must have held in his thoughts as he did his preparation.

Though of course the symptoms of hypothermia, if that is the cause of his passing, would have eased his pain with the confusional state and inability for rational thought long preceding the stupor and unconsciousness presenting before his body shut down.

 

[Martyn]

Some people have hinted at there being something noble in his death, because he died doing what he loved. I honestly dont get that. I cant see anything noble in his parents having to bury their 29 year old son. It reminds me a bit of stories I've read of mountain climbers who have died trying to summit the big peaks of the world. When they leave a devistated family behind, young children without a father or a wife without a husband, are they brave adventurers, or selfish and reckless? I dunno. I can see why they do it, but for those that do want to test their mettle on the edge of the earth, you have to think that they do everything in their power to make it as safe as it can be.

We dont know the whole story but you have to wonder what kind of risk assessment led him to think this was achievable? Rannoch moor over winter, with no supplies, no support network and not even a mobile phone? All the papers have reported that his parents and friends begged him not to go. Survival is about living, not dying and from what little we do know, this adventure seems well into the red on the risk-ometer. He was a brave bloke, no question, but it's his parents I feel for.

 

[BushcraftAndSurvival]

I expect that his journal will reveal what happened, starvation can open you up to hypothermia fairly quickly. Find food out in the wilderness can be tough.

It's always sad to hear stories like this but at least he died trying rather than sitting indoors regretting not doing it.

Thoughts are now with the family

 

[Doc]

It is a great tragedy and this young man's death diminishes us all.

I know Rannoch Moor, having walked there, and also paddled Loch Laidon which runs across it. It can be a dreadful place in winter, and very midgie in summer.

Long term outdoor living in winter is very difficult in Scotland because it is cold and wet, as opposed to the dry cold of polar regions. Your clothes build up moisture, and even goretex is none to breathable when the surface is soaked. The usual solution is to remove the condensation from your clothes each evening in a heated cabin/bothy or heated tent. But even bothies with a fireplace are typically denuded of wood in the surrounding area. In some ways Rannoch is better than much of upland Scotland, as there is forest on the periphery (around the youth hostel, and the famous Black Wood of Rannoch), and you often find bits of long dead Scots Pine preserved in the peat.

I suppose you could get dry in a lean-to with a long log fire, but you're talking a lot of wood.

A mobile may not have helped. There's certainly no coverage around Loch Laidon.

This incident does raise a lot of questions in my mind, as he was not so far from help, and I wonder about illness as well as the cold. But I would agree, speculation in an open forum is not kind to the family. My thoughts are with them.

 

[Hoodoo]

Condolences to family and friends. All who wander off the beaten path should take heed and take care. I think it's natural to want to pursue a wild existence but modern life does not prepare us well for its indifference.

 

[Paul_B]

I don't know what really happened to him, I don't know him, I have no opinion on this incident for that reason. I'll wait and see what the authorities determine the facts of this premature death are. I feel sorry for the family though. Nothing can be done for the deceased but respect shown for the dead can help the living family members. Thoughts towards them.

 

[petrochemicals]

you really are going to have to fix that search engine, google is more relevant about bcuk than bcuk's own searck engine.

Defacto: things like this are sad and everyone will have sympathy for those involved.
Have just posted on this, searched it on the site , and now found it on google.

I would just like to add perspective on this, on what others, Mary McArthur and others on hear have said.

He seems to be having tried to out do native people. native people's have to kill wild animals and store meat. In this environment the natural course would have been to shoot a deer, a sheep, a horse, caught a salmon, killed birds, saught shelter in the lowlands, taken yourself out of harms way, prepared food in the summer ie learning to provide for yourself, and (NOT SARCASTICALLY) gone to civililisation and found a house.

all of the above things are either :

a ) illegal, against the law, naughty naughty.
Or
b)completly contrary to the idea of bushcraft.
or
c)stocking up during the summer, and live in the bothy all winter isn't an option because it' not forraging

what he was doing was completly contrary to human sense, just like mountaineering in the snow, and was hit with his equivalent of an avalanche.Just because you believe that with bushcraft skills and the modern world if it all goes wrong you can bail out,in such an environment severe difficulties don't take long. Hypothermia and dehydration quickly lead to desision making problems and disorentation and when on your own there is no one to help. people just want to go to sleep in this situation, and even though the nearest town is one to two days walk, it would not have entered his head.

In my opinion he was pushing the boundaries of what is humanly and physically possible, and when that happens people die. Take everest or k2, thats why you dont catch me in similar situations, man could not do these things in prehistory, so he shouldn't do them now relying on modern technology!

 

[bilmo-p5]

... man could not do these things in prehistory, so he shouldn't do them now relying on modern technology!

Why not? If man didn't use his technological advancement to push his boundaries and extend his limits, he'd still be living in pre-history.
Have you ever travelled to London in less than 2 days?

 

[boatman]

Oetzi had either crossed a mountain pass or was about to. He got to where he died even with an arrow in his back and the various ailments he suffered from.
Given no arrow wound we would probably have never been aware of his existence as his journey would have been accomplished. So please do not say what humans of any perod are not capable of and use that to attempt to limit what we should be doing.

The death in the op was a sad event, a tragedy.

 

[Goatboy]

Oetzi had either crossed a mountain pass or was about to. He got to where he died even with an arrow in his back and the various ailments he suffered from.
Given no arrow wound we would probably have never been aware of his existence as his journey would have been accomplished. So please do not say what humans of any perod are not capable of and use that to attempt to limit what we should be doing.

The death in the op was a sad event, a tragedy.

General opinion is that he got the arrow in the back at the site of his death due to the fact that the internal bleeding would've killed him quickly. He didn't travel there with it. He also had eaten well just before death of food types that weren't foraged at site, deer meat, bread, grain. Also they recon by pollen analasys of his food that he died in late summer, not winter. If he was running (as is believed) then he was maybe just hitting the heights in order to escape or to get somewhere else quickly. There's no evidence to suggest he was intending to stay. Even modern stone age/metal age tribes only visit high areas that are resource impoverished to collect something or to get somewhere, and have a good idea of skills and resources coupled with forward planning to facilitate this. It's believed that the Viking colonies failed on Greenland as they relied on their idea of a way of life coupled to their religion and civilisation that failed them as the climate worsened, whereas the Innuit survived by adapting and forward planning theirs.

I don't know the chap who died so I won't bad mouth or disparage him. I've lived, worked and played in the highlands and mountains (ice climbing was my thing), but thinking that I could survive in those conditions for any length of time with no stored food or hunting tools is crazy. For a start the flora and fauna is so denuded and based towards a monoculture of land use that without intamate knowledge of what little is where you'll struggle to garner a snack never mind a whole meal. There was a reason that our neolithis and mezolithic forebears spent so much of the time in the lowlands and especially by the shore. They are a much more food rich environment.

 

[maddave]

Rannoch moor is bleak even in the height of summer. Very little in the way of food and burnable material (unless you start stockpiling and drying peat). It's a sad thing that a life has been lost but I feel he had the odds stacked against him from the getgo

 

[rik_uk3]

you really are going to have to fix that search engine, google is more relevant about bcuk than bcuk's own searck engine.

Your really going to have to get to Specsavers, the thread is fifteen months old lol

 

[Toddy]

.........and the number of hits the site gets means the search engine is an enormous drain on the servers. So it's kept very basic. Admin actually advises using Google to search the site

Toddy

 

[resnikov]

In Google put:
search term site:bushcraftuk.com

i.e. pink sporks site:bushcraftuk.com

It then only searches the site you have referenced.