Hiker found a month after partner’s fatal fall

A distraught Czech woman who was found after a month alone in a hut on a famed New Zealand hiking trail described on Friday how she had braved extreme cold and failing health after her boyfriend died falling down a slope amid snow, wind and fog.

Pavlina Pizova said at a news conference in Queen- stown that she and her boyfriend, Ondrej Petr, set out on July 26 to walk the 20-mile Routeburn Track on the South Island of New Zealand. The Department of Conservation described the route as “the ultimate alpine adventure, weaving through meadows, reflective tarns and alpine gardens.”

But the hike took a tragic turn on the second day, Pizova said. She and Petr fell down a slope, but he fell farther, to his death. His body was retrieved Friday.

After climbing back up the slope, Pizova said, she walked for two days to reach a warden’s shelter, called the Lake Mackenzie Hut, that had food and a fireplace. She broke in an stayed there a month before being found Wednesday by police officers. They flew to the site by helicopter after being alerted by concerned relatives in the Czech Republic that the couple were missing.

“I made a few attempts to walk out from the hut, but my feet, the weather conditions and the deep snow discouraged me from doing so,” Pizova said.

A police representative in Wellington, the capital, said Petr’s death would be the subject of a coroner’s investigation but that it had been ruled “nonsuspicious.” Pizova was free to leave New Zealand, he said.