Tongariro hiker slides 100 metres
PHILLIPA YALDEN A woman had to be plucked from the side of Mt Tongariro after taking a 100-metre slide.
Her hiking companion watched as she slipped on what rescuers described as an ice rink in freezing temperatures and flew over the ridge line and out of sight on Thursday morning.
The Taupo¯-based Greenlea Rescue Helicopter got a distressed call from the injured woman’s companion shortly before 8am.
The pair were hiking the mountain when the woman slipped.
Initially, her friend was unable to ascertain if the injured woman was alive, since calls to her went unanswered.
‘‘Eventually her friend - who appears to have lost consciousness for a period of time in the fall - was able to respond,’’ a statement from the rescue helicopter said.
‘‘The Greenlea crew were able to use their extensive knowledge of the area to quickly establish the exact location of the injured party, and immediately respond with an alpine rescue team.’’
The crew arrived to find the uninjured woman ‘‘herself perched in peril on the edge of the same icy ridge from which her friend fell’’.
Rescuers from LandSAR and the Ruapehu Alpine Rescue team used crampons and ice axes to traverse the solid ice and anchor the uninjured woman to the ‘‘bulletproof’’ ice for the helicopter hover extraction.
The crew administered first aid then flew her to Rotorua Hospital for treatment.
‘‘I can assure you at 8.15 in the morning and with air temps still just reaching zero degrees, it was not unlike an ice skating rink up there and I was struggling to stand upright on the flat ground next to where I landed the helicopter,’’ one of the rescuers said in the statement.
Photographs of the mountain show the distance in red markers from where the woman plunged from the top of the ridge to the bottom.
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