Amazing tale of survival

Played out against the backdrop of the snowy Fiordland mountains, young Czech tourist Pavlina Pizova is now safe after her almost month-long ordeal, isolated in a Routeburn Track hut after the death of her partner, Ondrej Petr.

Most of us will never be able to comprehend what she has gone through. Her survival is an unbelievable story of human resilience in some of the harshest conditions imaginable, ranging from utter despair as she heard the last breaths of her partner to total elation at a sound of a much different kind, the ‘‘thudthud’’ of a helicopter landing at Lake Mackenzie Hut on Wednesday.

For almost four weeks between those events, Pizova was completely alone. The hut provided a home of sorts – warmth, firewood, shelter, food – and the deep snow piled outside was a ready source of water. But she was cut off, unable to operate a radio because she could not understand the English instructions and initially suffering from the cold and close to frostbite.

Through the Czech Republic’s honorary New Zealand consul, Vladka Kennett, we know she tried to leave the hut several times, even making snow shoes from vegetable baskets, but was overcome each time by the depth of snow, the threat of avalanches and her physical and mental condition. Faced with not knowing when – even if – she would get out, what must she have been thinking and doing all that time? How did she keep up hope?

The grief of losing her partner would have been overwhelming, made worse by not having family or friends to share it with. Any books or magazines in the hut would be in English. But with each day the thought, ‘‘will I ever be rescued?’’, will probably have been growing stronger. And how much longer could she have survived without rescue?

Bad decisions were made by the couple at the start. They began walking the Routeburn on July 26, despite advice not to from the Department of Conservation and MetService warnings of snow down to 700m or lower during the rest of that week. Acting as translator, Kennett also says the couple did not have a locator beacon, had not told anybody of their plans and were not carrying a tent.

Ignoring expert advice and not sharing a likely plan are basic errors to make when tramping in our mountains. Some may be fortunate enough to get away with such casualness but others get caught out badly. Rescuers often have to put their own lives at risk to reach those who have not prepared as rigorously as they should have.

Others have come to grief on the Routeburn. Israeli tourist Liat Okin died not far from the hut in March 2008 and her body was not found for six weeks.

Exhausted and emotional, Pizova has described her rescuers as heroes and admits she and her partner ‘‘made a few mistakes’’, despite them being well informed about our mountains and the changeability of the weather.

Hers is truly a remarkable story. It is also a salutary tale for anyone intending to go into our unforgiving back country.

What must she have been thinking all that time? How did she keep up hope?