Trapped inside a Ruapehu crevasse
‘‘So I just closed my eyes and relaxed my body and waited to die.’’ Manfred Murray
As 15-year-old skier Manfred Raikes sailed off a ledge and into an eight-metre-deep crevasse, he closed his eyes and accepted death was imminent.
Moments later, he opened them to find he had landed perfectly between two ice walls, without a scratch on him.
The Canterbury schoolboy was on school holidays visiting Mt Ruapehu with his dad and brother. The two boys had completed their first run on the mountain when they decided to take a quick detour off the track.
The route was signed, but Manfred missed a turn-off. He skied over the brow of a hill and went straight into a waterfall hole - eight metres down to the bottom of it.
‘‘I thought it was all over. So I just closed my eyes and relaxed my body and waited to die.‘‘ Moments later he opened his eyes to find himself sitting at the bottom of the cave, caught perfectly between two ice walls and completely unharmed.
‘‘If I had landed anywhere else I might have been dead. It was really rocky.’’
‘‘I was just pretty stocked to be alive.’’
‘‘Manfred accepted his fate as he slipped down the hole, he had no fear whatsoever.’’
His mother Philippa Murray said just thinking about what happened had given her heart palpitations for a week.
‘‘He’s had so many accidents, and I think that’s about enough now.’’
National Park police constable Conrad Smith said without the one bar of cellphone coverage, Manfred would have been in trouble.
‘‘Nobody knew he was there... If he hadn’t had [cellphone coverage], he would have been stuck down there.’’
The rescuers set up an anchor system and lowered one of the members down the hole. They then pulled the pair to safety - just two hours after Manfred became trapped. He skied himself back to base. Manfred said in the weeks since the accident he realised how lucky was.
‘‘There must have been something out there looking out for me.’’
Mt Ruapehu is well known for its waterfalls, which produce melt holes on the mountain. They are common this time of the year as the temperatures rise.