August 26 –

recovered.

Kennett said the couple were in the country on a working holiday visa.

She did not know about their backgrounds. ‘‘[Pavlina] wants to go home now, back to her family.’’

Pizova had tried in vain to save her partner’s life on the remote Fiordland track, but it was no good. She heard his final breaths and it was over.

Then, she faced a new ordeal. The couple had already spent one night out in the snow, wind and fog on the Routeburn Track.

Pizova would endure two more nights before she left her partner where he lay and found shelter in a DOC warden’s hut. It would be a month before she was rescued.

In that time, recovering from frostbite, she fashioned snow shoes from sticks to try to walk back to civilisation.

Despite exercising with a heavy backpack to gain strength, she was forced back by bad weather and snow that was chest-deep in places.

She used ashes from a fire to write ‘‘H’’ [for help] in the snow, hoping a rescuer would see it. No-one did. The hut had a working radio, but the English operating instructions were indecipherable to her. There was no choice but to wait.

‘‘Nobody can prepare you for this,’’ she later told police of her ordeal.

Finally, Kennett, who lives in Glenorchy, near Queenstown, spotted ‘‘a random Facebook post’’ from concerned relatives at home in the Czech Republic. She passed Pizova and Petr’s details to searchers and she was found.

‘‘If the message didn’t come through she would still be there,’’ Kennett said.

Kennett has since acted as a translator for Pizova.

Pizova and Petr embarked on the Routeburn Track from the Glenorchy end on July 26 and, despite warnings from DOC staff, planned to walk its distance and return through the Caples track. According to Kennett, they had no tent or locator beacon and told noone of their plans.

After spending one night at the Falls hut, the pair got caught in bad weather and became disoriented.

They spent the night in the open, trying to shelter from the wind and snow. The next day, still disoriented by heavy fog and strong winds and with snow still falling, the pair slipped five to seven metres down a steep slope.

Petr fell further and became trapped between branches and rocks. Pizova was able to reach him but could not free him. She heard his last gasps of breath before he died.

‘‘She tried everything she could but she was totally exhausted,’’ Kennett said. ‘‘It was impossible [to free him].’’

Unable to move her partner, Pizova spent two more nights in sub-zero conditions against a ‘‘vertical rock’’, her mostly wet possessions in her sleeping bag for warmth.

‘‘She probably didn’t even sleep she was just trying to move the fingers and toes to somehow keep warm,’’ Kennett said.

‘‘It was freezing. She was there in the worst part of the winter.’’

Over the next two days Pizova tried but failed in foggy, snowy conditions to reach the campsite she could make out in the distance.

The next day, July 30, she reached the camp at Lake Mackenzie, Kennett said, and broke into a warden’s hut through a window to find food, gas and firewood.

Her numbed fingers had turned white and her feet swelled drastically when she removed her boots. It was days before she could put them on again.

‘‘She made several attempts to get out but was always stopped by her physical and mental condition,’’ Kennett said.

‘‘She was devastated by the loss of her partner.’’

Kennett saw the family’s Facebook post on Sunday and provided photos and car details to searchers, who found the car in the Routeburn car park at Glenorchy. Petr’s body was recovered yesterday.