A 32-year-old Perth trekker has died from a suspected heart attack, soon after setting out on the gruelling Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea.
The Kokoda Spirit trekking company says Shane Green died last Sunday, during the steep ascent to the Deniki campsite, several hours south from Kokoda.
It says the young man just keeled over, and trekking masters tried CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
The company says every walker has to have a doctor’s certificate that proves they’re fit to walk. …
This year around five thousand Australians are expected to take on the challenge of the historic 96 kilometre track, where Australian troops resisted invading Japanese forces during World War Two.
History of the Kokoda:
Between 21 July and 14 September 1942, 2,000 Australian troops defended the Kokoda Track leading to Port Moresby against 10,000 elite, battle-toughened Japanese troops. The Australians were ill-equipped, poorly supplied, and facing an enemy determined to brush them aside … These circumstances forced the Australians to stage a fighting withdrawal lasting four weeks across the ridges and valleys of the Kokoda Track …. During those four weeks of bloody fighting on the Kokoda Track the Australians suffered very heavy casualties.
This cross-section map of the Owen Stanley Range may assist viewers to gain an appreciation of the rugged terrain …
… conditions on the Kokoda Track were appalling. The narrow dirt track climbed steep heavily timbered mountains, and then descended into deep valleys choked with dense rain forest. The steep gradients and the thick vegetation made movement difficult, exhausting, and at times dangerous. Razor-sharp kunai grass tore at their clothing and slashed their skin. The average annual rainfall over most of the Kokoda Track is about 5 metres (16 feet), and daily rainfalls of 25 centimetres (10 inches) are not uncommon. When these rains fell, dirt tracks quickly dissolved into calf-deep mud which exhausted the soldiers after they had struggled several hundred metres through it. Sluggish streams in mountain ravines quickly became almost impassable torrents when the rains began to fall. …
besthike.com 
Almost winter there, so not quite as rainy but still fairly warm. I’ve been told sudden heart attacks in younger people are impossible to predict, it just happens due to some defect in the heart.