New hiking safety campaign to educate visitors and reduce emergencies on Great Southern trails

A new hiker safety campaign will aim to ensure visitors to the Great Southern are well prepared before they tackle the region’s most challenging trails.

After several hiker deaths in recent years, Outdoors Great Southern has received funding from the State Government to create the Hike Safe in the Great Southern campaign. Bluff Knoll, Mt Toolbrunup, Castle Rock and Bald Head have all been touched by tragedy in the past four years.

OGS acting chief executive Simon Barras said as the region’s trails became more popular, they would be used by more hikers with less experience.

He said the Hike Safe in the Great Southern program would promote the benefits of advanced grade hiking, encourage visitation to the Great Southern and provide tips about practical hiking skills.

“We have some amazing hiking trails in the region and as a result the Great Southern is witnessing increasing use of its advanced grade hiking trails,” he said.

“A significant number of people who are hiking the region’s trails are new to hiking or have limited experience on grade four and five trails. As hiker numbers increase, so too do emergency call-outs.

“This project is aimed at visitors to the Great Southern, who intend to hike grade four or five trails, but have limited experience or knowledge of hiking in rugged conditions.”

The campaign will be a collaboration with Mt Barker SES, WA Police, Mt Trio Bush Camp, and the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.

Mt Barker SES manager Kirsten Beidatsch said her unit had been involved in many of the region’s major hiker search and rescue operations.

“We’re providing information to the committee about what’s gone wrong and what sort of messages may have prevented it if they’d had access to it first,” she said.

“It’s not necessarily that the information isn’t out there, it’s just people don’t always know what they should be looking at before they plan it — or they don’t know that grade three is actually very hard so they’re not thinking about that before they go.”

Ms Beidatsch said because planning was still in its early stages, the specifics of the messaging and how the information would be conveyed had not been finalised.

The campaign is expected to launch next year.

“We’re asking ourselves right now whether or not we want permanent signage — that doesn’t catch people before they start hiking though,” she said.

“So we’re also looking at social media and maybe brochures, we’ve just to work out how to get them to people before they do the hikes.”