Six teenage hikers have been rescued from Mount Barney after becoming lost and spending the night on the summit, in a new reminder of the dangers faced by bushwalkers in the mountain parks of south east Queensland.
Queensland Police received a call just after 5pm on Sunday that the six male hikers, aged 18 and 19, were stranded at the top of the Scenic Rim mountain.
The group remained in constant contact with each other throughout the night before being rescued by a rescue helicopter on Monday morning.
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The rescue mission came just a day after a much more serious incident at Mount Beerwah in the Glass House Mountains, where an 18 year old Brisbane woman died and an 18 year old man was airlifted to Sunshine Coast University Hospital in a critical condition.
Emergency services were called to the mountain at 10:30am on Sunday after reports that the two had fallen a significant distance while hiking.
Police later confirmed that the two climbers had been descending the mountain in difficult conditions when light rain made the surface slippery.
Six climbers from two different groups were involved in the Mount Beerwah incident, according to Senior Sergeant Kylie McLellan.
While another group nearby administered first aid following the fall, the deceased woman was hiking with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend.
After a weekend that stretched rescue personnel across two significant hiking areas in the southeast of the state, the accident has raised awareness of safety.
The other four individuals were later removed from the mountain unharmed.
In fact, Mount Beerwah had already been closed off to the public prior to Sunday’s fall due to the rain and the potential for rockfalls.
Official park alerts issued by the Queensland government stated that all access routes on the mountain had been closed off since 9th March, and this had still been the case on Monday while the route had been assessed.
