In Reply to: Be careful hiking posted by Jillie on Wednesday, 31. March 2010 at 14:12 Bali Time:
Unfortunately he did not die instantly, at 8am he fell, 9.00am we were informed and the police came and told that he would be airlifted out by helicopter in 30 mins, at 1.00pm I spoke to his Twin brother on the guides phone and he told me he had now passed, they had climbed down to him, and not to rush the helicopter that they were waiting on ( did not have the heart to tell him one was not coming).
His friends have asked that we let people know how dangerous it is as they were not told of any dangers and were told they were doing the easy climb. He was walking at the back and his guide was in front of all three of them.
The police told the friends that a helicopter was on the way and had collected his body at 10.30am. At 12.30pm I rang the airport to see where the helicopter was and was told there was not one - the only one with a winch is in Surabarya but it was busy and could not come, if it had been sent it would take 2.5 hours, not 30 mins. At 6.00pm tonight they had finally brought his body to the top (he had fallen 100 metres), and they were on the slow, dark climb back down, the ambulances waiting at the bottom could not get any closer than a 1.5 hour hike down.
His family have just been advised of his passing as the police wanted the body identified when it came down (although his twin was there).
It rained heavily on Monday and the tracks are extremely slippery, although accidents happen everywhere this might highlight how hard it is to access the area (we also had low cloud from 9.00am and it did not lift so the pilot I spoke to said that they would not have been able to go in anyway).
They were planning to spend 2 months here, and are only 10 days into their trip, they were headed to the Gilli's today, but now will all head home to prepare for his funeral.