When 5-year-old Max Christie slipped out of sight 90 metres down a rocky Whakapapa cliff his parents feared they wouldn't find him alive.

Just a day after a man's nasty 60m tumble, an Australian man is lucky to be alive after a big fall in the same area.

An Auckland climber fell "like a rag doll" after slipping while decending from Mt Ruapehu's Dome Summit.