John was a 28-year-old schoolteacher from Feilding. A fit keen tramper, he had decided to undertake a solo trip, one section of which traversed the open tops of the main Tararua Range.
One of the highlights of the trip was traversing the Tararua Peaks, a set of two sharp peaks at 1200m which required negotiating a 20m aluminium ladder bolted to a sheer rock face.
But now John was in trouble – big trouble!
After safely negotiating the ladder, he had slipped and fallen off the track down a near vertical rock face covered in leatherwood, a tough stunted alpine tree with sharp leaves and unyielding limbs.
He had slid so far down he had been unable to get back up the rock face through the leatherwood which faced largely downhill, with his pack on.
It was early October and unseasonable weather had closed in. It was atrocious, with gale force winds, driving rain, hail and patchy snow.
He spent an uncomfortable night in his sleeping bag perched precariously on the steep rocky side of the hill in the cold and rain.
He had a cellphone but no coverage, and decided he couldn’t stay where he was as no one would know he was in trouble.
He made the decision to take some food and warm gear in a small drybag and climb his way back up the face, pushing the bag up in front of himself and slowly pulling his way up. Then his drybag slid off the face and disappeared into the abyss below him.
He had to spend a second night in the cold and wet conditions on the face with no shelter, sleeping bag or food.
The next day, very cold, tired and scratched, he managed to crawl up onto the track he had fallen from. He had very limited phone coverage and was able to dial 111 and get out a very scratchy message asking for help.
It was now dark heading into the third night of his ordeal, the weather was a howling westerly with rain and extremely cold, he was soaked to the skin, hungry, exhausted and hypothermic – it was doubtful if he would have survived a third night in these conditions.
Suddenly out of the darkness, rain and wind appeared a team of Search and Rescue personnel.
This team had endured an epic helicopter insertion, where they had to jump from the machine onto a steep face one by one as the pilot had battled to hold the machine steady against the strong wind gusts.
They had to then walk for 3 hrs along the exposed tops in the freezing cold and rain, hardly able to stand upright in places due to the strength of the wind, and negotiate the ladder.
From that moment on, John knew he was going to be ok.
Despite his poor condition, the SAR team were able to get him into some warm, dry waterproof clothes, shelter him from the wind and get some hot food and drink into him.
There was nowhere to pitch a tent, and so once he had warmed up sufficiently, he was assisted by the team to the shelter of a hut which was a further hour walk away. By the time they got him to the safety of the hut, it was midnight.
I am very grateful for the amazing job your team did that night - I wouldn’t be here otherwise. I hope you are all doing well. Thanks again, John
The Search and Rescue team consisted of two policeman, and three civilian volunteers; a forestry manager; a funeral director; and a factory manager. Back at the base in Levin, two other policeman and four volunteers, an electrician, a farmer, a pharmacy assistant and a dispatch manager, provided logistics and radio support for the field team.
The field team was able to communicate back to base that the lost party had been found and was safe. There were high fives all around at the search base – another successful rescue in very trying conditions for Horowhenua Search and Rescue.
The volunteers involved in this rescue had all given their time away from work and family to help out, not only on the actual search, but also the countless hours of training over many years required for them to be able to undertake a rescue mission like this.
A big thank you to John for allowing us to share his story
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