After getting into enduro-style motorcycles, I found myself without others to ride with. That’s why I got the ResQLink VIEW RLS from ACR.

I started out Saturday around 10am and followed some tracks up in the forest near Tumut. After awhile, I ended up in an area that was quite steep and very unfamiliar. After a major clutch failure on my bike, I took some overgrown tracks but soon became disoriented and fatigued. Upon coming across a track, there was severe washout one way, and a large fallen tree in the other direction.

InsteaI reached the top, climbed under a fence, and oriented myself to the town. I started down the hill. After a few incidents, including a 3m tumble onto rocks, I was thrown into blackberries. Finally, I reached the creek.

I spent an hour of trying to pull the bike up the creek bank (no clutch to ride the bike), but decided to park the bike and began walking around 4:30pm. I exhausted my food around 1pm and had no water. So,  I filled the water bottles in my pack with water from the creek and began hiking in my motorcycle gear (minus the helmet) in the direction of my UTE.

After walking for almost 2 hours, the sun had set and the temperature dropped to near zero very quickly. Without clouds overhead, and as the wind started to pick up, I made the decision to activate my ResQLink VIEW RLS. I decided to continue towards my vehicle, knowing nearby roads would eventually appear if I kept going.

The task was slow, as I had to push through a few hundred meters of 2m blackberry bramble in near total darkness. Several wombat burrows also made me lose footing and had to be climbed out of carefully.

Once the police rescue arrived, I found that I was still less than halfway to my UTE. At the rate I had been travelling, would have taken close to 6 more hours to reach it (plus over an hour of travel home).

As it was, the police found me at approximately 9:15pm and alerted my emergency contacts. I returned to my UTE at 10pm, got home after midnight, and ate for the first time in 12 hours.

After resting, I quickly recovered the motorcycle, thanks to the GPS points sent with the distress beacon. Thankfully, my safety team was able to provide the information of where I was and what I was wearing to the emergency responders, as well as confirming my location.

I will be making sure to get a new PLB before continuing to ride.