Stranded tourists Frozen edge to glider’s altitude record move from lodge
Six helicopters started ferrying guests back from the isolated Blue Duck Lodge in the central North Island about 2pm yesterday.
There are 81 guests that need to be evacuated after heavy rain washed out the only access road on Wednesday night. They are being flown to National Park Village.
Ruapehu Emergency Management Officer Nick Watson said a welfare centre had been set up at National Park to arrange accommodation and travel for the stranded tourists. Many of the guests are with adventure tour company Stray.
Watson said the road to the lodge could take a long time to repair. Remedial work done on Wednesday was all undone by further rain overnight.
Ruapehu Mayor Don Cameron was flying out to the lodge to see the damage for himself. He said they would be seeking Government funding to help fix the road.
More bad weather is on the way for the North Island this weekend.
Watson said they were also flying in fresh supplies of food and water for around 20 people, including the owners and staff, who will be remaining behind.
Earlier, Watson said the people would spend Thursday night at the Blue Duck Lodge at Whakahoro on the Retaruke River, near its junction with the Whanganui River, after slips on the road and a flooded river had cut access to the lodge.
Lodge owner Dan Steele said on Thursday night that the accommodation usually took about 90 people, so it was a little bit of a squeeze, but guests were in good spirits. ‘‘We’ve still got no power, no roads and no water in some places. We’re just trying to do what we can do - but the guests are being awesome; they’re all trying to pitch in and help.’’
MetService meteorologist April Clark said the low pressure system responsible for the downpours had moved off the North Island to the east yesterday morning. Central Hawke’s Bay remained on watch for heavy rain, with warnings for Gisborne and Wairoa. Fifty years ago Doug Yarrell found it hard to celebrate flying a glider higher than anyone else in the world; he was too cold.
The Masterton pilot, now 85 and still flying four to five times a week, clearly remembers the flight over Wairarapa on March 9, 1968, that shattered the world gliding altitude record.
The record stood for a matter of weeks before it was surpassed in Nevada, United States, but the milestone has never been bettered in New Zealand.
As he rode the wave upwards, his rate of ascent was an astounding 1000 metres a minute.
Though he found this exciting, getting up to those rarefied heights brought bone-chilling temperatures.
The enormous discomfort somewhat detracted from the elation one might expect to feel when surpassing the previous record of 33,000ft, he said.
‘‘I started to get a bit convulsive with the cold. By this time the canopy was iced up and the instruments were icing up on me.’’
After he had gone as high as he could he descended as fast as he could. Even after he landed he wasn’t able to fully revel in his triumph. ‘‘Because I was still suffering from the penetration of the cold into the marrow of the body for about three days, it took that long to really get over it.
‘‘Then I could sit and think about what had actually happened,’’ he said.
In the late 1960s, Yarrell was a keen glider pilot having won competitions all over the country.
He had his eye on flying to extreme heights for some time and when the weather pattern rolled through creating the wave system needed for such altitudes, he took his chance.
The German Schemp-Hirth glider he was flying was towed by a Tigermoth biplane from Hood Aerodrome in Masterton up to about 1300 ft (396m) where Yarrell released himself and searched for the wave that would take him up.
Aviators around the country were aware of the Wairarapa Aero Club pilot’s attempt and nearby radio operators were keeping a close eye on the situation.
Yarrell’s aircraft was under the guidance of the Ohakea Air Force base air controller at the time and when it was near its peak of 37,288 feet (11,356 metres), the controller let him know one of their Antarctica-bound Starlifters had just flown underneath him.
To verify the altitude, Yarrell’s barograph was sent to the DSIR which calibrated and certified the official altitude.
New Zealand has almost unique topography which produces these waves of air. There were only a couple of other places in the world such as the United States and India which produced this type of effect, Yarrell said.