Avalanche survivor dug her way out
Skill and experience could not save Martin Hess and Wolfgang Maier when a ‘‘terrifying wall of ice’’ hit them on the Southern Alps.
The two mountain guides died yesterday morning when an avalanche struck their climbing party on Mt Hicks, near Mt Cook.
Buried under snow, climber Jo Morgan struggled for 30 minutes to set off her locator beacon, spent another 45 minutes digging her way free, and survived.
She shouted to her companions without response and realised the worst: they had perished. Rescuers arrived at the scene at 7.30am. Using an avalanche dog, they had the men’s bodies out in minutes but the pair could not be revived. Hess and Maier, both in their 50s, were New Zealand residents originally from Germany.
Hess was a New Zealand Mountain Guides Association (NZMGA) member, while Maier belonged to the German Mountain Guides Association.
Morgan, wife of economist and philanthropist Gareth Morgan, was on her second-to-last climb of the 3000m peak challenge – a mission to climb all 24 New Zealand peaks higher than 3000m.
Maier had guided Morgan up 22 of them.
Down in Mt Cook Village later in the day, Morgan said her goodbyes to her lost friends before being flown to Christchurch, where said she was ‘‘absolutely broken’’ by the deaths.
NZMGA president Jane Morris said Maier and Hess were both
‘‘Occasionally Mother Nature will have the final say and, in this case, with a really tragic outcome.’’
NZ Mountain Guides Association president Jane Morris
‘‘experienced, capable guides, working in terrain that was well within their skill levels’’.
Morgan said it was sheer luck she survived the ‘‘terrifying wall of ice’’ that buried them.
Morris said avalanche forecasting was not an exact science. Guides did their best at making the safest possible decisions in very dynamic environments. ‘‘Occasionally Mother Nature will have the final say and, in this case, with a really tragic outcome.’’
The trio were tied together on one rope as they climbed.
They were ‘‘thrown down the hill’’ by the avalanche’s force, Morgan said. ‘‘We weren’t being foolish or anything and we just hit a slope that ... it was laden with the type of snow that avalanches [happen].’’
Area Commander Inspector Dave Gaskin told media the trio left their hut about 2am and were coming down Mt Hicks when the avalanche hit. It took emergency services about 90 minutes to get to the scene after the beacon was activated. There had been bad weather leading up to the avalanche, but there was a ‘‘good weather window’’ when the group were buried, Gaskin said.
Mt Hicks is just northwest of New Zealand’s highest peak, Aoraki/Mt Cook. It reaches an altitude of 3198m and has 30 climbing routes, according to the Climb New Zealand National Route Database.
Jo Morgan has been a bus driver, a writer, a motorbike aficionado and an adventurer.
She is the wife of economist and philanthropist Gareth Morgan, and the mother of Trade Me creator Sam Morgan.
The mother-of-four didn’t take up mountaineering until she was 58, but soon became hooked on the ice.