Rescued climber Lisa Auer's beaming smile said it all as she touched down at Te Anau after five days trapped on a mountain ridge.
Ms Auer and fellow professional international climber Jonathan Baird had conquered Mt Tutoko but swirling low cloud cover kept them trapped.
"It's a relief to be
down, thank you," the Wanaka-based Australian told rescuers after she and Mr Baird, a Briton, were plucked from the mountain early on Saturday afternoon.
The pair had started their climb in the Fiordland National Park on December 10 and concern for their safety mounted last Tuesday when they were overdue.
Appalling weather hampered the rescue effort for three days and the first glimmer of hope came when a break in the clouds enabled the first sighting of the pair, waving at a rescue helicopter on Friday night.
Using night vision equipment, helicopter pilot Richard Hayes found the pair on a ridge about 152m from the summit just before 10pm.
Both suffered trench foot from the ordeal but were otherwise fine.
Senior Constable Phillip Robertson said the two climbers had done everything right from a search and rescue point of view when the bad weather closed in.
They had enough gear and decided to wait the weather out, he said.
"When conditions worsened they believed it would have been foolhardy to push on and they stayed put."
The climbers did not carry a locator beacon.
- NZPA
