Climber thankful to be alive but wary of Mt Cook

Australian climber Mark Hateley was on top of the world. After a gruelling 10-hour ascent, he had reached the peak of New Zealand's highest mountain.

Standing on the summit of Mt Cook, he proudly posed for a photograph, but minutes later the climb became one he would prefer to forget.

The Brisbane university graduate lost his footing after starting his descent and plummeted down the mountainside, until his life was saved when a tiny ledge stopped his plunge.

"It doesn't bear thinking about too much," he told the Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne in his first interview since the accident.

Mr Hateley was unconscious when he was pulled from the mountain on January 20 in New Zealand's highest helicopter rescue.

He was taken to Christchurch Hospital, spending a week in intensive care and three weeks in a general ward before he was able to return to Brisbane.

He suffered a dislocated ankle, fractured fibula and broken tail bone and had fluid on the lungs.

More than 200 people have died on mountains in the Mt Cook National Park in the past 90 years, and at the time New Zealand climber Peter Hillary said Mr Hateley was extremely fortunate.

"All the areas I've climbed on Mt Cook, if you fall you're unlikely to stop anywhere until you get to the bottom".

Limping around his parents' Brisbane home, Mr Hateley said he was now feeling "pretty good".

"Week by week it certainly is feeling better," he said. "I'm pretty close to what I'd consider normal."

Mr Hateley only vaguely remembers the moments before his 10.30am fall, but friends have helped him piece together what happened.

"The ice had just shattered under my foot and once you lose your footing up in that situation it's obviously very slippery ... it was almost impossible to stop once you've started."

He fell 100m, clearing a 4m-wide crevasse that dropped an estimated 20m before narrowing. He would almost certainly have been killed if he had fallen down it.

A tiny snow ledge beneath the crevasse ended his plunge. The next spot that would have stopped his fall was at least 700m further down.

Adding to his fortune was the fact he was not tied to his climbing partner.

"I would have killed him as well. You just can't stop and we would have taken a lot longer ride," Mr Hateley said.

He has nothing but praise for his rescuers and the medical staff who treated him.

"Everyone who helped me out, I absolutely thank them," he said.

Despite his near-death experience, Mr Hateley is determined to climb again.

"Rock climbing I certainly will do. High mountains like that - we'll just have to see," he said.

- NZPA