Rescue team keeps watch on Mt Cook

By MONIQUE DEVEREUX

Australian mountaineer Rohan Kilham knows what it is like to fall 200m down the side of Mt Cook.

He also knows he was lucky to live to tell the tale.

Mr Kilham, 23, was descending the mountain with his friend David Tuck last summer when the boulder they were using to anchor their ropes gave way.

As they fell, Mr Kilham was wondering, "Will we see tomorrow?"

Although the pair slid down a craggy ice gully, their injuries were relatively minor. Mr Kilham suffered a badly bruised leg and cut face. He was unable to walk but Mr Tuck, in better condition, made it to the nearest hut and radioed for help.

That call to the Aoraki/Mt Cook Alpine Cliff Rescue Team last December was the first of the summer season and they were not called out again for several weeks.

In the first week of this season, the team has already been summoned four times - three "standard" pick-ups of injured climbers and one mission to recover the bodiesof four Latvian mountaineers.

Alpine Cliff Rescue is the only paid rescue team in New Zealand and has a fulltime staff of nine in summer - the six permanent rescue staff who work for the Department of Conservation in the Mt Cook National Park and three seasonal staff employed from now until March.

This year the seasonal staff are two women and a man and their experience varies from working in ski patrols to instructing at the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre in the central North Island.

The rescue team is paid for by DoC to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Team leader Andrew Welsh says this has been a slightly busier week than normal, but over Christmas and New Year he expects to be called out three or four times a week.

During the holiday season the team members are on call 24 hours a day seven days a week and must be within 15 minutes of the Mt Cook village at all times.

"People do the job because they enjoy doing it, but there's a fair amount of dedication that goes into it as well."

That dedication has long been appreciated by climbers like Rohan Kilham, and this year it was also recognised by way of the New Zealand National Search and Rescue Award.

Mt Cook is New Zealand's highest mountain but there are 10 other peaks over 3000m in the same national park. The Alpine Cliff Rescue team has to know them all.

Mt Cook has claimed seven lives this year and 205 in total since it was first conquered in 1894.

In the four years Mr Welsh has worked at Mt Cook, he has seen 11 deaths. But he says it has to be taken in perspective - it is a dangerous sport and the elements are unpredictable.

For the total number of climbers - there could be 30 on Mt Cook every day and 100 altogether in the national park - the accident rate is standard compared with ranges like the Swiss Alps.

Mr Welsh has worked in Switzerland in a region where there could be 3000 climbers on any one day. The annual death rate was 65.

Alpine rescue is a dangerous job, and rescues are planned and carried out methodically and carefully.

The risk facing the rescue team is the first consideration.

"There are always so many variables to consider. It's not just a matter of all jumping in a helicopter and flying up to pick the climbersup."