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Two climbers, including an internationally certified mountain guide, died while scaling New Zealand’s highest peak late on Monday, police said.
Authorities were alerted that a group of four climbers had run into trouble high on Aoraki, also known as Mount Cook, prompting them to deploy specialist teams and helicopters for a rescue operation.
While two climbers were located and airlifted to safety unharmed, police reported on Tuesday, the guide and his client were found dead in steep alpine terrain. Specialist teams were working to bring the bodies down “in a challenging alpine environment”, police area commander Vicki Walker said.
The two victims were still to be identified. Mr Walker said police were working to contact their next of kin and “until that process has been completed, details of the climbers will not be released”.
The climbers were roped together when they plunged near the summit of Aoraki, the towering 3,724m peak in the heart of the Southern Alps.
“A helicopter from Queenstown flew to Wanaka and picked up the Wanaka Alpine Cliff Rescue Team, while a helicopter from Dunedin flew straight to the mountain and began searching,” Mr Walker told The Timaru Herald.
“The helicopter from Dunedin located two climbers in the group who were airlifted from the mountain at around 2.15am.”
The helicopters searched the mountain for the remaining pair throughout the night, only to find them dead early in the morning.
Aoraki is a magnet for seasoned mountaineers, but its steep, glaciated terrain is notorious for unpredictable weather, crevasses, avalanches, and shifting ice.
The national park surrounding the peak has seen over 240 deaths since the early 1900s.
File. Aoraki, also known as Mount Cook, is New Zealand’s highest mountain (AP)
Many of the people who have perished on the mountain have never been recovered. They include two Americans and a Canadian who died on Aoraki last December. The Americans – Kurt Blair, 56, of Colorado and Carlos Romero, 50, of California – were both certified alpine guides.
Authorities called off the search for the trio after five days, saying certain items found on the mountain indicated they had fallen to their deaths.
Meanwhile, Mountain Safety Council chief Mike Daisley said on Tuesday that recent “fine weather has drawn many mountaineers to the high alpine, with multiple guided and recreational teams summiting Aoraki over the past week”.
“Current conditions on the mountain are considered ideal for mountaineering,” he noted, “with firm overnight snow conditions and well-filled glaciers following early spring snowstorms.”
New Zealand Mountain Guides Association president Anna Keeling said the guide who died on Aoraki was a well-respected member of the community. “They were an integral part of our guiding community,” she said.
