The merciless beauty of Taranaki Maunga
On Tuesday two men lost their lives on Taranaki Maunga. Brianna McIlraith and Jane Matthews investigate how a mountain that looks so harmless can be so deadly.
In autumn, Taranaki Maunga becomes a death trap. Not that it appears that way, which is a big part of what makes it so deadly.
Standing at 2518 metres tall, surrounded by the Tasman Sea and the west coast of New Zealand, the perfectly cone-shaped stratovolcano is often only lightly dusted with snow between March and May.
On a clear day its slopes beckon. But the beautiful maunga, which about 20,000 people summit each year, is not to be underestimated.
Summer is the easiest time to summit due to limited ice and snow at the peak, former police officer and alpine rescuer George White says.
In the spring the soft slushy-like snow means if climbers fall they don’t slide down the mountain.
But in the autumn the mountain is a death trap for inexperienced climbers, he says.
‘‘The maunga can bite, and he bites hard.’’
The 58-year-old New Plymouth man has been involved in countless rescues and body recoveries from the maunga in his time and knows its many moods.
The first recorded fatality was in autumn 1891, when 23-year-old William Southward slipped on frozen ice and fell to his death.
A further 18 climbers have lost their lives on the maunga during this time of year.
The winter months have claimed more lives, but that’s to be expected. Temperatures on the mountain plummet, it is covered in thick ice and snow and frequently smashed by high speed winds from all directions.
The environment is absolutely hostile to life.
But in autumn it’s different. To the untrained eye conditions seem summer-like, White says, when in reality they are far from it.
This is because the upper reaches are covered in verglas, a thin coating of ice or frozen rain, making climbing exceptionally challenging – even with crampons and ice axes.
‘‘It’s about as easy to walk on as a pane of glass is,’’ White says.
‘‘And know that if you fall you can’t self-arrest, and you’re gone.’’
The verglas is also there in winter and is just as deadly. But climbers are usually prepared for it.
Even then, things can go wrong. In 2013, Derek Quickfall recalled the moments before six people fell over Hongi Bluff to their deaths on the maunga in July, 1953.
Seconds before they fell all he could hear was the steel rasp of climber Keith Russell’s ice axe hopelessly scraping on a mountainside of frozen snow trying to stop the roped-together group.
‘‘There was too much momentum. He couldn’t hold them. There was no shout or cry. There was just silence,’’ Quickfall said.
That silence was the last seconds of life for Russell, Andrew Lornie, and nurses Ruth Caldwell, Janet Cameron, Julie Cassells, Ellen McBeth, whose deaths become known as the Nurses Accident.
It remains the deadliest day on the maunga.
Stratford-based climber Guy Vickers knows the maunga is never to be taken lightly.
On a ‘‘beautiful’’ day in July 2013, the father-of-two was tramping from Dawson Falls to Kapuni Lodge on his weekly solo tramp when things went wrong.
Even now, eight years later, he admonishes himself for a moment’s complacency. He didn’t test the soft snow he was about to walk on, his left foot dropped into a massive hole.
‘‘I tried to stand up, and I couldn’t put weight on it,’’ Vickers says.
‘‘There was no cell coverage and that was all I had on me that day and there was no-one around. I knew that if I wasn’t rescued I wasn’t going to survive the shock and hypothermia,’’ he says.
Vickers, who has more than 25 years of climbing experience, wasn’t expected home for hours. His wife wouldn’t start worrying for a while, so he knew it was up to him to make a plan and get off the mountain alive.
‘‘I had to crawl about 50m with an injured foot. I was getting colder and colder and running out of energy. I was struggling with the pain.’’
After numerous attempts to text and call 111 asking for a helicopter, he finally got through.
As low cloud started to build, he heard the blades of the Taranaki Community Rescue Helicopter whipping through the wind overhead.
‘‘It was the biggest relief, the best sound in the world… the thump of those blades,’’ he says.
He was put on a stretcher and winched into the helicopter, before being flown to hospital, and admits the experience was a ‘‘bit of a wakeup call’’.
‘‘It’s a real treat having the park on your back door. But things change very quickly on the mountain.
‘‘And you can’t survive that if you’re up there.’’
Vickers is one of the lucky ones. On Tuesday, Christchurch based engineers Richard Phillips, 46, and Peter Kirkwood, 33, became the latest to die on the Taranaki Maunga, shortly after reaching the summit.
Police were called about 10pm after one of the men fell. When rescuers found them, shortly after midnight, both the experienced mountaineers were dead.
Since records began in 1891 more than 80 (73 of them while climbing) people have lost their lives on Taranaki Maunga, making it the second deadliest alpine environment in New Zealand behind Aoraki/Mt Cook.
The differences between the two are massive. Aoraki is 1200m taller than Taranaki, at 3724m, and part of the rugged and intimidating Southern Alps.
Aoraki doesn’t stand alone like Taranaki, where you can’t drive 30 minutes from New Plymouth and then walk another 90 minutes on an 4WD track to the Tahurangi Lodge, which is more than halfway up.
The ease of access is another of the mountain’s deceptions in autumn, New Zealand Mountain Safety Council chief executive Mike Daisley says.
But the reality is, one mistake, even by the most experienced climber, can be disastrous.
‘‘The mountain doesn’t know your experience level, it treats everyone the same,’’ he says.
Daisley, who worked for Sport Taranaki 20 years ago, used to take groups up the maunga but has only ever climbed it in summer.
After that it’s for experienced mountaineers only.
He says organisations like his give advice to climbers, but at the end of the day it is an individual’s choice whether to climb or not.
The idea of restricting people with rules doesn’t work for him – instead the mountain council has listed a number of recommendations for inexperienced people to consider when climbing.
It includes only using the Summit Track, attempting in only perfect weather, starting no later than 9am, and stopping every hour to re-asses your fitness and the weather conditions.
The council also recommends only attempting the summit between January and April.
Taranaki Alpine club president Ivan Bruce says after summer the maunga quickly goes from one ‘‘pretty much everyone’’ can climb to only those who are technically proficient with the use of crampons and ice axes.
And even then experienced climbers can succumb to accidents.
‘‘You can’t stop people dying on mountains,’’ he says.
‘‘It’s just the nature of mountaineering.’’
Ideally climbers would take snowcraft courses, which teach the skills needed to tackle alpine climbs, Bruce says.
Like Bruce, Federated Mountain Clubs president Jan Finlayson says she would hate to see peaks and national parks closed off to the public, but encourages people to join a club and build their knowledge and experience.
‘‘Joining a club is one of the best ways to gain experience,’’ Finlayson says.
‘‘There’ just no substitute for competence and judgement built over time.’’
‘‘It’s about as easy to walk on as a pane of glass is. And know that if you fall you can’t self-arrest, and you’re gone.’’ George White