LandSAR Wellington was requested to provide assistance on Saturday by our Wairarapa colleagues at 2130.

LandSAR Wellington provided 4 personnel to assist with incident management, 15 field members and 2 search dogs over the 2 days we were involved in the operation.

Weather during the operation was extremely poor, with high winds and heavy rain severely limiting helicopter operations and forcing search teams to be withdrawn from flooded rivers due to unacceptable risks to search personnel. Weather and flood conditions prevented all of Sunday’s planned task from being completed. Easing weather on Monday 31 allowed helicopters to be used for some tasks.

A helicopter found a note from the missing person at Mid Waohine Hut and spotted the missing person waiving on the track from Mid Waiohine to Isabelle (the peak next to Mt Holdsworth).

The missing person was safe and well, although had a suspected broken toe.

It is thought that the missing person ran from the Holdsworth car park past Atiwhakatu Hut and up the marked track to Baldy. He then got lost on South King and dropped into Dorset Creek, where he spent the night under a rock bivy. He travelled down the river to Mid Waiohine Hut, where he spent the night and left a note saying how he intended to return to Holdsworth road end. He was located between Mid Waiohine and Isabelle.

Wellington’s search and rescue volunteers are rejecting editorial calls by the Nelson Mail for people at the centre of search and rescue operations to be charged for the cost of rescues.

“Every minute a person delays calling for help makes the search task that much harder,” said Ross Browne, Chairman of Wellington Land Search and Rescue (“LandSAR Wellington”).

“Delays make the potential search area larger, more complex and more resource-intensive to resolve.  We’d rather be called early for a straightforward task than spend a week searching because someone was worried about cost and waited too long to call for help.”

“LandSAR Wellington has 60 operation members. Collectively we volunteer close to 5,000 hours each year preparing for and conducting search and rescue operations. Most of the cost associated with search and rescue is donated time by volunteers like ours.

“Our members donate their time to help people from all walks of life – dementia sufferers, children, runners, and families walking in our regional parks. It’s not just the outdoor community we’re out searching for anymore.

“We’re adamant that victims shouldn’t be billed. As a SAR organisation, our job is to save lives, not just the lives of those who can afford to pay the bill.“

ENDS

Our members helped the race organisers in the planning stages, installed a communication system and provided search and rescue coverage on the day. A great (wet) day out and a productive debrief afterwards.

A 5yr old autistic child ran away from their parents on the 5 Mile Track at approximately 1545-1600. When they ran away, they were less than 1km from the Catchpool car park. The parents searched for 20 minutes and then left the track to call for help.

The initial response to the incident came from Police general duties staff and a Police dog handler. Police O/C SAR was notified at approximately 1630 and LandSAR Wellington was called out at 1640. The incident management team was assembled at Wellington Central Police Station by 1700 and teams arrived at Catchpool by 1800 (the drive from Wellington City to Catchpool takes approximately 40 minutes).

A complication for this operation was the missing child didn’t speak or wasn’t likely to call back when lost and had a poor sense of direction. The child was often attracted to water and heights, although he had a reasonable judgement of risks.

Two dog handlers had reported indications near the bottom of the Butcher Track and Orongoronga track and stream. These areas were the focus of search activity.

Eventually a team heard the child humming/groaning  in the creek below the Butcher Track. Two paramedics (one a Wellington LandSAR Member) assessed the child and the child was reunited with grateful parents.

This operation involved an extensive multi-agency effort. The following list of organisations is not exhaustive: Police, LandSAR Wellington, New Zealand Fire Service (Cmnd/Hazmat vehicle),  and 3 other units), Lower Hutt Community Response Group.

The public also provided food, hot drinks and extensive offers of help. The ongoing support of the local community is greatly appreciated.

Wellington Land Search and Rescue (“LandSAR Wellington”) volunteers are thrilled with the successful conclusion to the search operation in the Rimutaka Forest Park.

“It’s the sort of operation members joined to do. Reuniting lost children with their families is enormously rewarding,” Ross Browne, Chairman of LandSAR Wellington, said.

Wellington Land Search and Rescue regularly assist Police with operations in the Rimutaka Forest Park. The park is a heavily used recreational area popular with family groups, trampers and runners.

“The strong partnership between Wellington Police and Wellington LandSAR is a great example of community groups and police working together. In the Wellington Police District, LandSAR provides 60 volunteers to support the 12-person Police SAR squad. Our members fill key roles in the field and in search management, and have a huge amount of operational search and rescue experience to draw on,” Mr Browne said.

LandSAR Wellington is an all-volunteer unit that responded to 30 incidents in the past year, assisting more than 45 members of the public. It depends entirely on donations to purchase essential equipment like portable radios and incident management computer systems.

ENDS

This was a four day search, and the outcome, even over four days, was entirely attributable to track and clue awareness (not called TCA then).

David Ferry was an 11 year old on a school bush walk not far from Waikanae. The group had walked some distance up the southern ridge track to Kapakapanui, and were making good progress back down. However on reaching the stream at the bottom, they were one short. David Ferry. It soon transpired that this young fellow had a reputation as a bit of a ratbag, and had discussed with classmates that he might disappear for a while on the way down, to see how the teachers reacted.

The Kapakapanui track comes out at the lower end of the Ngatiawa River, and to the first searchers it seemed most likely that David had headed off up the stream. There were possible footprints in the lower parts of the stream. It was the middle of a fine warm day when he took off. Through the first two days this became about as big a search as we have ever had. There is a big waterfall in the stream, usually considered impassable, about 4km and over an hour up the stream, and searchers certainly checked out all the way to there – but no David.

I was a Team Leader on yet another search over well-covered ground on Day 3, not far from the waterfall, where the stream is very steep sided. Not finding anything useful. So I was proud of my team member Geoff Spearpoint (not a big man) who went under a log where everyone else had gone over it. Rain had largely wiped footprints in the stream bed, but there, under this log, was one single small footprint in the muddy sand. Wow!

We tried to get a photo – not very successfully – but Geoff did a good sketch. But hey! this footprint - which was confirmed as being David Ferry footwear – was pointing downstream. No other prints. This was an hour or more from where he had left the school party. We spent time that evening working out what it could mean. Matching TCA with LPB. Dom photographer and tramper Barry Durrant had run up to the site and got a decent pic for the paper.

Our scenario for David’s behaviour for planning Day 4 was this: On a fine warm day, excited by getting away, David would have made fast progress up the stream, in particular up through a difficult stretch of cataracts where the stream falls steeply down through runnels and boulders, but he would have been topped not much further up at the big waterfall. Tiring, cooling by then, he would have set off down - under Geoff’s log – but then he came to the cataracts again – and he couldn’t get down. So there he is, trapped in just 400m of very steep sided stream bed.

What we figured is that he would have tried to climb out – so teams were tasked to thoroughly search several contour lines up the sides, of just that 400m of stream. David was found there – some distance  the side – where he had apparently expired from hypothermia on the first night.
There was another feature I have always remembered. The stretcher being carried out with the body was very light. The searchers – in spite of the tragic result, were elated and relieved on Day 4 – and by the time they got down to the broad river flats where the parents, family and school staff were waiting, the SAR teams were running, making a lot of noise, this was like a race! John Tristram as rescue controller got it right, at the last minute! He saw what was happening and went straight over to the family group and explained that this wasn’t disrespect – it was relief after a long hard search – and eased what could have been a difficult situation.

This was a six day search, with the Tararuas at their most alpine. It involved a large number of search teams, all operating in the harshest Tararua tops conditions.

Tweeddale was a young police constable, who had recently been accepted as a member of the Wellington Police SAR squad. On a day off he decided to head up Mount Holdsworth. The tops had heavy snow cover, and the snow was well down below the bushline. When he was reported missing search teams soon found his motor scooter at the road end and there were his logbook entries and some of his possessions at Powell Hut (where he had left his motor bike tool kit.)

Although conditions were still atrocious, the first teams found some signs indicating that he had probably reached the summit but deviated towards High Ridge on his descent. I was in a team that went up on ay 2 of the search – I had a very fast ride from Wellington to the road end with Bill Bridge, who at that time was police SAR chief in National HQ, and also Chair of the FMC SAR Committee which looked after the volunteer side of SAR nationally as the forerunner of LandSAR NZ. He was also a local adviser, and ad written the text book Mountain Search and Rescue in New Zealand (1960). Bill had decided this search needed his input as field controller and was on his way up there to take it over at the field HQ at Mountain House.

Old Powell Hut had never been so crowded as it was that night! I was glad I had been up there with a HVTC working party which had carried a new water tank up just a fortnight before – although with everything so frozen there was still a shortage of water.

The first part of my team’s task on the morning of Day 3 was to get up to High Ridge as quickly as  possible to meet and if necessary to assist a HVTC team which hadn’t made it back to Powell the night before, in gale and zero vis. By morning the weather was improving – a lot more snow had fallen, but at least it was clear and the wind had dropped. The High Ridge team had spent a somewhat uncomfortable night in an improvised bivvy against one of the few big rocks on the ridge, with their unpitchable tent over them. They were fine, just packing up as we arrived. I remember a definite agreement amongst the teams at Powell was that we’d keep things simple and that the field controller would never know there was a woman in the team that had endured that night on High Ridge – Jan Heine! The paragraph in Bill’s look on Women on Search Lists would be considered today very condescending!

That day my team dropped into Isabelle Creek from the bushline on High Ridge, reaching the creek immediately below the big waterfall, (the one on today’s topomap at 1803300, 5471260). The boulders in the creek were heavily snow covered but there was certainly no sign of a lost person. Our search task was downstream from there, and we were back at Powell by evening. It turned out that the team marching further up that branch of Isabelle Creek from well above the bushline had not been able to get all the way down to the big waterfall – they had been stopped by another waterfall late in the day. I was certainly aware that evening that there was a high priority to completely search that part of Isabelle Creek and arranged to be leader of a team with rope rescue capability to go back on Day 4 to check it out.

This is the only time in my SAR career I have used rope techniques for real, on a search! We abseiled down the first waterfall, left the rope in place, then the next one and then another. We certainly didn’t see any way out up the sides of the canyon we had got ourselves into and had to leave each rope in place. I was the only one to descend our fourth and last rope and found myself standing at the top of yet another waterfall. From there I could look down into a pool and then to the brink of the big waterfall and down to where we had been the previous day. In spite of boulders, snow drifts, overhangs, I thought I could see it all. So back up our ropes.

The search – which had many teams, all working in difficult conditions was suspended soon after that. There was a follow-up search three months later, to search some of the same territory in better conditions. The body of Constable Tweeddale was found at the bottom of the big waterfall in Isabelle creek, and appeared to have fallen from above at some time since the original search. So he probably was in that pool we didn’t quite get down to without a fifth rope.

I went been back there in summer conditions some years later and found that with a bit of persistence it was possible to get in and out of that particular pool from the High Ridge side…ah well! Anyway, if you are in the area, you should check out the site, map ref above, interesting country, you never know when someone might have to go there again! Another feature we don’t see now… porters carrying supplies up to Powell – pre helo.

Early Friday evening, 26 May 1989, 13 year old Karla left her parents’ home in Taita for the short journey on her bike to the Taita shop – a few blocks, which she often did. When she hadn’t returned as usual, her mother set out to look for her, and soon found her bike abandoned by the road. Police were called and a major operation was started for a possible abduction.

During Saturday the Police enquiries were intense and a major search phase was begun during the day. Initially this was to cover all the roadsides of suburban Taita, and all reserve or waste land, playing fields, bush areas, the Hutt River. This was continued for several days, with up to 30 volunteers involved in the field each day.

One feature of particular interest for me was that as SAR Adviser I accompanied SAR Sergeant Roydon McLeod to the detectives’ debriefing at the end of each of the first few days. If you have dozens of detectives doing house to house enquiries, and pursuing every possible lead from total police knowledge, the volume of information is colossal, almost unbelievable. Any Hutt Valley citizen with a mention of possible sex crime in their personal records had been required to come up with a rock solid alibi. By the end of that Saturday Police had it down to a short list of three – one of whom was eventually convicted.

The search radiating from Taita continued for about a week, with seven SAR teams most days, and then a new phase came into it. The main suspect at that time worked for the Hutt Valley Drainage Board and had an access key to the Pencarrow coast road. Could he have dumped a body around there? Some people living on the Seatoun hills across the harbour who spend a lot of time on their telescope reported car lights heading around to Pencarrow and back late on that Friday night that were otherwise unaccounted for. The search moved around there – a lot of work for the Police Dive Squad in the Pencarrow lakes and in the sewer outfall itself.

For many days in June SAR teams searched about ten kilometres of coastline, much involving probing, and probed huge areas of swamp around the lakes and huge areas of dry sandy beach beyond the lighthouse, always looking for a body in a possible shallow grave. Meanwhile the Police were closing in on their suspect, and had enough forensic evidence from his home and car in Taita to arrest him in early July. Soon after, he confessed and on July 9 he led Police to a burial site on the beach about 2 kilometres past Pencarrow, which was surprisingly deep due to six weeks of shifting sands, where Karla had been buried alive after rape and beating.

Paul Dally remains in prison.

Talking to Sue Cuthbertson recently she mentioned that her first search operation was the Neuweg search. I remember that one – a big search in the Tararuas, like a search is supposed to be.

I know Walter Neuweg, he’s still around in Upper Hutt, and we’ve certainly talked about that search, one of our biggest bush searches of the 70s.
Walter was an experienced and accomplished hunter, and always maintained a supply of venison at home. One Saturday in October 1976, he and Freddie set off for a day up Tregear Creek. Tregear Creek drains from Dennan to Field Peak on the Southern Crossing, its a big, high, steep and rough catchment. In the 1960s there had been a logging operation in the Waiotauru Valley, and when it finished the access roads were open and in good condition – I could drive my Mark 1 Cortina from the Akatarawa Saddle, for over 20km, up to the Maymorn Junction, handy to Renata, and down the other side, right down to Waiotauru Forks, then up the Snowy branch, to park the car at the bottom of Tregear Creek. So we had good access to that part of the Tararuas.

By the middle of the day, Walter and Freddie were well up the creek, close to the bushline, when Walter collected a large falling boulder, which knocked him over near the creek, and very obviously broke his lower leg. Freddie summoned superhuman strength, and managed to lift the boulder off Walter, made him as comfortable as possible in a safe position above the stream, and then his task was to go for help. Freddie wasn’t the bushman or the bush navigator, but he was fit, and a runner. He left his rifle and pack with Walter and took the car keys, and in two hours he had reached their vehicle.

Of course this was a rescue, rather than a search, and could have been all over before dark on Saturday. Walter had plenty of food, could keep reasonably dry the first night in his swannee and with plastic sheets, although it turned out he couldn’t reach water from the creek.

By the time a search could get into the field it would have been dark, and the operation started in earnest on Sunday morning. Forty SAR people were involved and Freddie was going to lead the rescuers back to the place – only two hours up. But when they got there – no Walter! Freddie was sure he had never seen the big waterfall in the stream. Teams went much further up the branches in the catchment that afternoon, and Walter says later he heard them calling, and fired off some rifle shots, but no-one came. A small helicopter had also been searching from early morning close above him, and he had arranged plastic sheets to be more visible when he saw it.

By Monday morning 80 searchers were in the field. An Iroquois was being used to get teams into the area, but it wasn’t until 3pm that they found Walter. Again he had heard their calls and fired off some shots.
Everyone had underestimated the speed with which Freddie had come down Tregear Creek, even he had, and he was going so fast he had never noticed any of the features he passed. However it worked out OK – Walter had good gear, and a positive attitude, and although his leg was broken in four places he recovered well and has always hunted.

I was involved in this search as one of the party which lost a member, and subsequently was a

search team member.

Wellington Anniversary weekend in 1970 was fine and the Hutt Valley Tramping Club party of 14 had been making the most of it. The party had gone in via the old Schormanns Track from Putara (not too far from Eketahuna) and once on the tops had headed north and dropped into the headwaters of Ngapuketurua Stream. Most of the group had flotation equipment, mainly car tubes, and they were aiming to follow the stream right down to its forks with the Mangahao (about 10km) and then on down the Mangahao, which is quite gorgey, to the farmland. Good three day trip for summer, with rivers low, and good company. By the third day, Monday, progress down the Mangahao was OK,
and party members had been swimming or floating down some of the pools, and river crossing was easy otherwise.

By about midday those of us furthest ahead started noticing that maybe there was getting to be a bit more water in the river as we waded over it – not too much, but enough that you had to be a bit careful of your balance. A few minutes later – yes it is definitely getting bigger, could be hard to cross, I’ll run back up and warn the others to keep out of it.

Five minutes later it was a flood. Huge river right there, seven of us on the right bank, four on the left bank climbing to keep out of the torrent, and three still further upstream, perhaps in the gorge pools just around the corner. Suddenly Ian and Patricia appeared, right in the middle of the river flow – she had a child’s flotation ring around her waist, he had a tube and he was hanging on to her. They were swept around the corner into the gorge downstream. Then came Graham – he was a strong swimmer and had no car tube, he mostly pack-floated in the pools – as he rocketed through big pressure waves right in front of us he became separated from his pack which was just ahead of him. This was a serious flood and we were in serious trouble.

Three missing, and the party was split. Roger Lough and I set out for help, back over the hills to the Kakariki farmland on the east side of the range. Police were notified and local SAR began search preparation. In early evening the first search team in the field met Ian and Pat just walking out where the gorge exits on to farm land. They had stayed in the centre of the flood flow, she had been particularly distressed but he had kept hold of her for about three kilometres of this, and they had run out of the river where their feet touched the bottom as it became shallower out of the lower gorge. They put their tent up there and slept for several hours! When they awoke, the river level had dropped and they could cross it towards the farm buildings they could see.

More searchers arrived from Wellington and Wairarapa early Tuesday to join the search for Graham Higgs. I was a member of a search team as were several others of the original tramping group. By then the river was back close to its normal summer level and the gorge could be searched. Graham’s body was soon found, caught under a log jam not far down the gorge from where he was last seen.

So what had happened? If you check the current ToPo50 topo map you will see a red warning on this river “Riverbed subject to rapid flooding” which is because it is downstream of the Mangahao hydro dams. This warning was added after 1970. The lower storage lake on the Mangahao side had an automatic release mechanism which could let out excess lake water with control by a clever syphon system, to maintain the lake surface at a set level and to lower a tipping dam gate by small amounts to allow more flow to the lower river bed as required. In 1970 this mechanism was poorly maintained, and faulty, and when even a small amount of release was triggered, the tipping gate did not tip down just a small amount, but tipped the whole way, all or nothing, letting about 4 metres off the lake abruptly into the river below, a wall of water. This was the flood event that caught the unsuspecting tramping party about ten kilometres downstream of the dam. In 2011 the main recreational users of this part of the river are likely to be kayakers, who aim for the programmed releases of excess hydro storage down the lower Mangahao several times a year.

This search sticks in my memory because in spite of being a major SAR operation, there was no solution, and Mr Smith is still missing. Jack Smith was in his seventies, quite frail and diagnosed as incipient or mild Alzheimers. He went for regular walks on streets and walkways near his home in Trelissick Crescent, Ngaio, and was recognised by many Ngaio residents. On the afternoon of Thursday 20 March he did not return as usual, and police were notified. It was unfortunate that within police it was not initially recognised as a SAR operation and although police spent a lot of time that evening and through Friday interviewing neighbours and flying a helicopter up and down Ngaio Gorge it wasn’t until Friday afternoon that our SAR sergeant, Steve Fitzgerald, became aware there was a possible SAR operation. Steve came and picked me up from work, as SAR Adviser, and we went out to Ngaio to speak to Mrs Smith.

Enquiries police were flying around outside in TWO helos while we were there! Nevertheless there were no doubts for us of an urgent need for a SAR operation. By that time we believed we already had a good knowledge of Mr Smith’s habits, and even if he had got into difficulty, we would find him with a systematic search. By 6pm we had 2 teams in the field (28 hours after Mr Smith had left home). Not a lot we could do in the limited daylight but the teams traversed the whole stream bed of the Ngaio Gorge stream from the Hutt Road right up to the Ngaio tennis courts before it was fully dark.

On Saturday 22nd Jack McConchie was Field Controller and we had 70 searchers in the field all day. We had a field HQ set up in Trellisick Crescent, and teams concentrated on making a close search of all the north side of Ngaio Gorge, all road and walkway and track verges to 10 metres or more, all over the hilltop from the water reservoirs, extensively around the chicken farm, and into all likely back yards. A lot of very thick vegetation checked. Some very steep areas were searched, some involving ropes and abseiling. Seventy well organised people cover a huge area in twelve hours.

The search was suspended at the end of Saturday, after extensive consultation SAR/Police. There was a lack of clues, and there were no leads for further searching. The HQ staff at the time were confident that the whole of Ngaio Gorge had been thoroughly searched from the high ground at the top of Setsan Way and Punjab Street down into the Korimako Stream and down as far as the Hutt Road. The mystery remains 25 years later. This is essentially a residential area with many popular walkways through the wilderness or steep parts, so why hasn’t someone’s dog ever found a body? Foul play wasn’t a high priority scenario. Even if Mr Smith had strayed beyond his normal routes, wouldn’t somebody have noticed him?

A feature I remember on this one was the Reflex Tasking – and I will emphasise this here.

Saturday October 4 1980 was cold for the time of year, with a southerly storm through the Wellington region. Nevertheless the Wellington Baptist Harrier Club had set out on a Saturday afternoon club run, with about 18 of them heading into the Rimutaka Forest at the Catchpool carpark and setting off over the Orongorongo track. When they reached the Orongorongo River most decided to turn back, and just the three fittest and fastest in the group opted to continue to complete the old Trampers’ Marathon circuit which would usually have taken 60 to 90 minutes from there. This run was well known to these runners, and well known to most trampers and SAR people through that era, as there was a race over the course as a feature event in the combined tramping clubs sports weekend held in February each year. One Daniel O’Connell was held in awe through those years as being the course record holder and unbeatable down hill.

The three runners did not return to the carpark as expected and Police were called about 6pm.

From the end of the Orongorongo track, the route would have taken the harriers down the bed of the Orongorongo River for about 5km, with several crossings of the river – knee deep plus on that day, then steeply up a scrubby spur about 300m vertical to reach Cattle Ridge. Then north along the ridge with a final climb up to Mt Baker, 465m, and a long descent back to the Catchpool down the Butcher track, which in 1980 was down a prominent spur with gorse scrub. That climb up the Baker track from the valley is up a spur very exposed to the south, and although the ridge north from there had patches of forest, the whole route is nevertheless quite exposed.

A search HQ was set up at the Park office in the Catchpool Valley (field search controller TSC) and teams were sent in through the night to cover the running circuit. The weather was wet and cold, with frequent showers of freezing rain and sleet. About 40 new searchers and Police were on-site early on Sunday to scale up the operation and Peter Button was there with his helicopter. Still no clues through the morning although we did ascertain a new LKP for the runners – part way down the valley section, where they had been seen running strongly and having no problems crossing the river.

Around 1pm the bodies of two of the runners were sighted from the helicopter, on the ridge heading southwest from Baker, on the other side of the Matai valley from their ascent route, not far from the track. They had apparently taken a wrong turning near the top of Baker. This is where the Reflex Tasking came in, although I don’t think we called it that then.

Two dead apparently of hypothermia, and one to find. He could have survived and would almost certainly be in poor condition. Plenty of searchers already there in the field, or at HQ, and a helo available to get them up to the high ridges. An instant plan was devised and teams briefed at HQ, or briefed by radio, and ferried up to the ridge. We had to cover the high parts of the track where the first two had taken the wrong ridge, and also more of Cattle Ridge and down the Butcher spur, especially looking for any signs that someone may have deviated from the track. Everyone appreciated the urgency, and as the one leading the planning and tasking I felt under immense pressure. I remember the impressive and efficient assistance from Ivan Morrison, the local NZFS manager, in maintaining the detailed record of tasks, and adapting to the dynamic nature of the new plan. How quickly can tasks be prepared and disseminated to about a dozen teams and converted into action? Once the teams were all back on the re-arranged search, I personally felt a huge sense of relief and was suddenly rather tired.

The third runner was also found dead, spotted from the helicopter at dusk on Sunday, several hundred metres further down the wrong route than the others, and further from the track on that ridge.

Most of the lessons we can learn from this tragedy relate to how vulnerable we all are to hypothermia. These guys were all exceptionally physically fit, aged 18 to 21, but wore only ordinary running gear, and were counting on that fitness and youth to carry them through. Wet, wind and cold – take any two. They had all three and were prime exposure candidates.

by Tom Clarkson

I recently found some of my old notes which reminded me of the rigours of this search. Several unusual features on this one, including the fact one of the days was physically the hardest in my SAR career. Also navigation by dead reckoning, and improvised radio direction finding. I’m really just going to tell the story of a single day, with a little bit about the events leading to and following, to give the context.

Brian and Ann Dudley were an Auckland couple, well-known in alpine club circles. Brian had an established reputation as an igloo builder and for trying new ideas – like using newspaper as disposable floor insulation. For the weekend of 9 July they were out on some of the remoter high parts of Ruapehu, possibly the Wahianoa Glacier. The weather deteriorated, and when they had not shown up by Wednesday a search was started. Hut checks etc, and teams from Auckland and the Face Rescue Team from Wellington were briefed there late Thursday. I was a member of a team led by park ranger Bruce Jefferies attempting to get to the crater area from the Turoa side during Friday and Saturday. Both days we were progressing so poorly in strong winds, freezing conditions and near zero visibility that we were not able to persist. Nevertheless on Sunday morning the Dudleys were found in an igloo/cave by the first team to get into the crater, on the plateau between the high peak, Tahurangi and Pyramid but getting there and locating the missing party had been an ordeal, and the team had dug in with the Dudleys and requested assistance.

Monday is the day I’m really writing about. This was our fifth day on the search. My team was tasked as a fast team of specialists to get to the igloo site as quickly as possible – John Shorland, comms; Ken Rigby, police; Pat McNaught, doctor; and me who claimed navigational and local knowledge skills as team leader. We stayed Sunday night in the NZAC hut on the Whakapapa side and left at first light, somewhat later than three Auckland teams who were already sledging equipment up to the crater. Conditions were whiteout – no visibility, although you could see non-white things as much as 10 metres away. We followed the Knoll poma lift – and even that was difficult – then took a compass course 172∞ magnetic towards Glacier Shelter.

We overtook the Auckland groups near the Shelter and continued on the same bearing towards Paretetaitonga.

We roped up, four on the rope, because we were concerned that the wind, which kept knocking us over, could blow us away out of control, and also because in spite of the 12 foot bamboo probe I was running along the surface in front of us I was anxious that if our navigation was slightly out we might step over the cliff into the crater lake – visibility did not exist even from number three to number one on our rope. As it was we made the turn to due south about 20m too soon and realised we were on steep slopes down to the lake.

We sorted that out then John was using the TR3 aerial wrapped around his pack as a direction finder to locate signals from within the last 400m of the snowcave. By the time we arrived there we had been out for five hours in the most severe conditions any of us had experienced and had seen no recognisable navigational feature since Glacier Shelter (except the slope down to the lake). Dead reckoning had been hard work and slow but we had been able to navigate right around the crater. Local knowledge certainly helped.

The six in the cave were pleased to see us as we had brought spare clothing, food and fuel. We were certainly getting a bit cold by then, and aware of possible hypothermia. But we had to dig our own cave – the Dudley’s igloo which had been extended for the first rescue team was minimal for six already in it. At least we had a decent shovel and in three hours had a cave over two metres square and 600mm floor to ceiling. The relief to get out of the wind! We had some stew and brew but were reluctant to keep the primus burning because we were having difficulty maintaining an entrance or ventilation through the roof. Blowing snow blocked things very quickly.

Comfortable night? Hardly – but we could keep warm and mostly dry. Then after more than a week of storm, suddenly on Tuesday morning it was clear – an Iroquois helicopter showed up and the ten of us were down to Waiouru for breakfast.

That wasn’t the end of the operation though – the Auckland teams who had been following us across the crater on Monday had dug two caves on the slopes below Paretetaitonga. We had remarked when we awaiting the helo that we should have been able to see them less than 1km away across the lake – there was nothing but smooth white snow! . As we left we could see two or three people there and it was only after we were out that the alarm was raised for one of the teams that was buried and had not emerged. Only their approximate position was known. The weather closed in again. A large number of shovels were flown to somewhere near Glacier Shelter just as the mist and wind came through. More teams had already been on the way up so there were many diggers quickly on site. Shortly before midday the missing team was found, over six metres below the surface – this is what can happen with drifting snow in a wind change! Their attempts at digging themselves out had been unsuccessful, and by the time of rescue they were in poor condition. All required oxygen to revive before being sledged down the mountain. Expert assessments were that they would not have survived another hour.

For 25 years, 60s to 90s the Wellington Region had a dedicated Alpine Cliff (or Face) Rescue Team made up of volunteers with climbing and alpine skills and was equipped and trained accordingly within the land SAR system. It was one of seven around the country and the teams often trained together. They were rarely used for SAR operations and were disbanded after a review by Police National Headquarters in the early 1990s.

From time to time I think I’ve been fortunate to be a survivor – things I have done haven’t always been the most sensible – and I’ve got away with it. I attach a photo of what I was doing just six weeks before the Dudley search – spending two nights of Queens Birthday weekend on the summit of Tahurangi in a bush tent. It reminds me that the Ruapehu weather can be quite pleasant! Would we have handled a change to stormy conditions as well as Brian and Ann Dudley?