NEED TO KNOW
- A 16-year-old boy was found dead in a national park in Sydney, Australia, after getting separated from his teenage hiking partner during a camping trip
- The companion was airlifted out of the Blue Mountains National Park after activating his personal locator beacon
- The victim was later found deceased in a creek
A 16-year-old boy has been found dead in a national park in Sydney, Australia.
On Friday, Jan. 30, the NSW Police revealed in a press release that the teen’s body was found in a creek in the Blue Gum Forest of Blue Mountains National Park at around 1:00 p.m. on Thursday.
The teen had been on a “three-day camping trip” with another 17-year-old boy before they became separated before the day before around 6:00 p.m. The older boy “activated his personal locator beacon” after getting separated from the 16-year-old.
“A land and air search commenced and the 17-year-old boy was winched [airlifted] from the Acacia Flats camping ground; however, his 16-year-old companion was unable to be located,” the police release read.
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PEOPLE has contacted the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), the Upper Blue Mountains Bushwalking Club, Ask Roz Blue Mountains and NSW Police for comment.
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After rescuing the older boy, a search operation was then carried out by agencies including the local police, Blue Mountains Rescue Squad, PolAir, NSW Ambulance paramedics and the TOLL Rescue Helicopter to find his companion.
“About 1 p.m. [Jan. 29], the body of the missing boy was found in a creek in Blue Gum Forest, Blue Mountains National Park,” officials confirmed.
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They added that the boy’s cause of death will be determined in the incoming days after a post-mortem examination was conducted.
The surrounding area where the teens had been hiking is known to have rugged terrain and poor phone reception, according to U.K. newspaper Independent.
“It can be a wild sort of an area,” the president of the Upper Blue Mountains Bushwalking Club, Sonya Muhlsimmer, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
“There’s a couple of footpads [narrow tracks] down there, if you just wander off, you might not be able to find that little track again,” she added. “It’s quite easy to get disoriented and lost.”
She also praised the 17-year-old for using a personal locator beacon.
“It can literally save your life, I wouldn’t go out without a PLB,” she said. “It’s a pretty rugged environment and it’s hard to get to, you’re a few hours away… especially if you get bitten by a snake or something like that, the activation of a PLB, you can get rescued pretty quickly.”
Muhlsimmer advised hikers to tell others about their route plans. “Have a map you can use offline, have your PLB and don’t separate from anyone,” she added.
Meanwhile, Graham Reibelt, co-founder of the tourism information platform Ask Roz Blue Mountains, told Sydney Morning Herald that the “whole area is very hostile.”
“After the fires went through, the vegetation has come back quite viciously, a lot of weed,” he said. “In that area, [tracks] are really self-maintained, with sufficient walkers going along there that it defines the track.”
“An accident can happen at any time,” he added, explaining that people submit forms to the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service when they plan on exploring the Blue Mountains.
“You can be 10 metres [32 feet] away from someone and not know where they were. You get disoriented.” Reibelt said.
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