The Mammoth Book of Mountain Disasters Read online

  Mick Bowie who had put the Ruth Adams La Perouse rescue into motion was still chief guide at the Hermitage. He was a big man, quietly spoken, who, you felt, could bare your soul with his glance. As soon as he got the message he guessed who had sent the distress call. Two Australians, Cooper and Murphy, of the Sydney Bush Walking Club had asked him a few days previously if Mount Cook was in condition. Mick had told them that it wasn’t and warned them against attempting it. I had also met the two Australians at the Unwin hut close to the Hermitage a few days before and had spoken briefly with them, but of course I had no idea of their objective. Despite Mick’s warning they went up to the Empress hut on the west side of the mountain with the intention of attempting Mount Cook by Earl’s Route.

  On 25 February, 1955 at 3.00 am they left this refuge in overcast calm weather and reached the low peak of Cook at 7.00 am. It’s about a mile between the low and the high peak. They reached the main summit and returned to the low peak by midday. A wind had now sprung up from the west and it was this wind and the poor snow conditions which had deterred me from making an ascent of the mountain. Thick cloud and rain came in on the back of the wind and visibility was poor. They were descending the steep couloir leading towards the Hooker Glacier when they slipped on snow-covered ice. The snow avalanched with them, for it had virtually no anchorage due to the thaw, and they were both partially buried. Cooper was killed in the fall and Murphy suffered back and head injuries as well as breaking his wrist, but he managed to dig himself out. Due to his injuries, he couldn’t dig down to his friend, but after a great effort managed to reach the Empress hut by descending a rock ridge. It must have been a gruelling experience.

  When he reached the hut he collapsed on the floor and it was two days before he was able to move. It was on the third day that I providentially received that weird weak signal from him. Due to his injured arm he hadn’t been able to operate the generator properly, indeed it was difficult enough for a fit person with full capabilities, as I had discovered, and it was that short message, about four seconds long, which I had intercepted that saved his life. Murphy was taken down in a distressed state by Mick Bowie’s rescue party. The body of Cooper wasn’t recovered.

  I also had a frightening experience in that same couloir down which the Australians fell. The next year I made the first ascent of one of Mount Cook’s ridges with two Americans, Dick Irwin and Peter Robinson. When we had finished the climb, we took the rope off and soloed the last section to the summit of Mount Cook. On the top we met a party of two guides from the Hermitage and a client. It was the first time that two parties had met on the summit. As they had ascended from the Empress hut by Earl’s Route, we decided to return that way. It was, they said, in good condition. They, on the other hand, were going back down the normal way, by the Linda Glacier, also making a grand traverse. Still travelling unroped, we started to descend the couloir that had proved to be the downfall of the Australians when Peter Robinson caught his crampons on his trousers and hurtled head-first down the ice. With amazing ability he managed to arrest a 300-feet fall with his ice axe and, being only bruised, he managed to continue, though much more slowly than before, and with the rope on! We had to bivouac above the Empress hut that night, as we were caught by darkness.

  Mick Bowie would have been able to observe our early progress through a telescope and was no doubt going to be annoyed that we had thrown precaution to the wind and gone unroped up that final section of the mountain. When we arrived at the Hermitage the next day I saw Mick standing outside smoking his inevitable pipe and in all probability waiting to give me, as ringleader, a piece of his mind, so before he could take his pipe out of his mouth I hailed him.

  “Hello, Mick, we did the climb, the new ridge, and we’ve decided to call it Bowie Ridge. I hope you don’t mind?”

  Later, Mick, when he was guest of honour at a dinner, related this story and concluded, “How could I give the blighters a telling off when they named a ridge of Mount Cook after me?”

  Buried on Mount Cook

  Karen Gazley

  There have been countless dramas enacted on the great stage of the Central Alps of New Zealand. Even today, though helicopters and modern rescue methods assist the evacuation of climbers, they don’t prevent accidents. As long as there are mountains there will be accidents. Paul Gazley, a talented young man, a pilot with the Royal New Zealand Air Force, was a national springboard diving and squash champion. He and Karen were married only seven and a half months when he was tragically killed in the second of two freak accidents. In the first he was buried for twelve hours under one of the biggest avalanches ever to come off Mount Cook. The second he didn’t survive. Karen and Paul tell their story.

  At home in Auckland I was bursting forth with all the news of my first South Island trip. I was so thrilled to see the family again and still highly exhilarated by the wonderful adventures I’d experienced during my discovery of the South. Three girlfriends and I had toured by car and thoroughly enjoyed some tramping in Fiordland, but Mount Cook particularly held a strong fascination for me.

  By chance I had met Paul for a few minutes in Hokitika on the West Coast just as his party was departing by bus for Christchurch after their three strenuous weeks of tramping and climbing in the Southern Alps.

  Now, a week later, the magnetism of those mountains still overwhelmed me. The prospect of returning to work the following day was far less inspiring and brought me abruptly back to earth, but I also realised that there was a lot more to life than just working.

  It was while listening to the 11.00 pm radio news that I first learnt that something was very wrong in those mountains. Paul Gazley and Olly McCahon had been caught in a massive avalanche off the South Face of Mount Cook at 5.00 am that morning. Olly had managed to free himself and had raised the alarm and by the time I heard the news broadcast Paul had been found. Certainly, I had been spared earlier anxieties, as I had been driving for most of that day from Wellington to Auckland.

  Suddenly, my world seemed shattered! Feelings of utter loss, despair and anguish seized me. I seemed so helpless and detached, being hundreds of miles away, not really knowing what was happening except that Paul was alive; these thoughts tortured me for the rest of the night. I prayed fervently for him.

  It was 5.00 am on 14 January when Olly heard a cheerful call, “Look at that,” from Paul who was in their bivouac above the south side of the Noeline Glacier where they had spent the night. It was an ideal site, a horizontal rock-rimmed platform with fresh water a short distance away trickling down the rocks. They were now making preparations to climb Nazomi (9,716 feet/2,961 metres), overshadowed by Cook’s glistening South Face.

  Paul had been stuffing his gear into his tiny climbing sack when he looked up and saw the top cliffs breaking off the South Face of Cook 1,500 metres above. He yelled to Olly who was some distance away.

  Paul later wrote:

  When I looked back, the plummeting ice hit a shelf part way down the face and exploded like a bomb. Powder snow was thrown high into the air and in front of me thousands of tons of it began crashing on to the glacier. Huge hunks of ice, as big as houses, began smashing themselves to pieces. I dismissed the thought of it sweeping half a mile across the glacier and burying us because we were too high, but I crouched down behind the rocks securing myself against the expected wind blast.

  Olly was fifty metres from the bivvy site attending to nature’s wants. Crouching comfortably he raised his head as Paul called out. Olly recalls:

  I looked up. The South Face of Cook was shedding its top ice cliffs directly opposite and above us. The avalanche grew huge as it thundered down, hit the bottom shelf on the face and exploded across the glacier. I crouched, staring fascinated, as it filled the whole sky and the world became a roaring wilderness of white, crashing, crushing snow bearing down on my head and shoulders. Hard things smashed on to my right hand and hit the back of my bare head, squashing me helplessly into a huddle on the rocks.

  Paul’s l
ast impressions before he was buried were:

  The blast came and scattered our gear over a wide area. Then it happened – what I hadn’t counted on, being bombed from above. I tried to stand up, but try as I might, the onslaught was too much. I was crushed into the snow, completely immobilised.

  I tried to move, but it was impossible. I was jammed down into a kneeling position with my chest on my knees, my right hand caught up by my head, and my left hand down by my side. Air was essential; I had to be able to breathe. I began to call for Olly, thinking that his position would be far worse than my own. Then I began swearing at myself, calling myself every name under the sun and struggling in vain to free myself from my icy tomb. Somehow, although I don’t remember how, I managed to free my left hand and, by clawing away at the ice, cleared a small hole in front of my face. By reaching out as far as I could, I was able to reach within about fifteen centimetres of the surface. At least I was now able to breathe.

  My left hand looked dreadful. The fingertips were missing and bleeding, steadily staining the snow red. I was determined not to scrape with them any more but soon found myself doing so. I then began punching at the snow but it was frozen solid and the effort was useless.

  Meanwhile, Olly had been partially buried:

  The world was hushed, no sound broke the awful stillness. Where there had been warm, red rock there was now a desert of hard-packed snow and nowhere could I see gear, bivvy or Paul. Shocked and dazed by a blow on my head, I was buried up to the waist, my smashed right hand was spreading blood over the snow.

  Panicky, desperate digging and heaving got me clear and the resulting freedom helped me fight off my new and overwhelming fear of the South Face towering over me. Inspection of my right hand revealed smashed knuckles and a badly cut palm. It looked as though I could write off my first finger. Closing my mind, I wrapped the hand in bog paper and a handkerchief.

  Above, the South Face was now showing grey ice and bare rock where there had been ice cliffs. The whole width of the Noeline was a jumble of blocks with great slide tracks sweeping off down the glacier. Around me the scene was almost unrecognisable, especially as I had partial amnesia and had to concentrate hard just to remember where I was and who I was with. Dread of the South Face stimulated my efforts to climb up to the bivvy site. I was soon well above it, although it was some time before I realised this and came down again. Finding the bivvy brought little joy for everything was buried.

  I could see no sign of Paul, although I guessed he must still be there. But it was now at least an hour after the avalanche and with one hand and no gear I couldn’t dig. After some desolate soul-searching I left him for dead and headed for the Gardiner hut. Obviously the best way back was to follow Saturday’s tracks, but they were across the glacier under the South Face. With my heart in my mouth I scrambled across the debris, in terror of a repeat performance. As I reached the other side and turned down the tracks I heard a crump and looked round to see a little avalanche coming down further along. Fear lent me wings and I headed down the glacier at a very rapid trot.

  Signs of the avalanche were everywhere. To my left the glacier was heaped with avalanche debris and where I was travelling the snow had been swept bare by the blast. Things went well until I reached the steep slopes above Gardiner and there, in sight of the hut, I found my way blocked by slopes of very hard snow. How I longed for ice axe or crampons and I wasted some thought on which I would rather have before deciding that crampons would be best.

  Fortunately it was now quite late, and the slopes further over were in the sun and presumably softened, but between lay the steep hard snow, criss-crossed with slots. These turned out to be the solution to my problem for I found that I could balance along the lower lip of one, then scramble down to the next using a pocket knife as an ice dagger and then repeat the performance. After that it was O.K. and with the sun warming my back I hurried down to Gardiner and the radio.

  At 10.35 am on 14 January Barrie Thomas, chief ranger at park headquarters, received an urgent message from Olly McCahon at Gardiner hut. A practised rescue procedure swung into action. Senior rangers Irwin and Thorne aided their chief, now field controller. Fortunately there was an Iroquois helicopter at Tekapo, fifteen minutes’ flying time away. The helicopter left park headquarters at 12.22 pm and carried a team of R. Whitely (leader), M. Dorfliger and Eric Saxby. Olly was collected from Gardiner and they flew over the search area. The wind was increasing and the weather was fine and hot. The high temperature caused such lack of power at 2,600 metres that the helicopter could not chance a landing at the bivouac site. There was no sign of life below. So the search party was unloaded at Gardiner hut at 1,700 metres, some one and a half climbing hours to the bivvy.

  At 2.15 pm the helicopter flew a second rescue party to Gardiner. This consisted of Paul von Kanel, Colin Monteath, Etienne Kummer and Hans Muller who followed the first team up the Noeline Glacier. The helicopter now flew Olly to park headquarters. Suffering from shock and in need of medical attention for his hand, Olly had remained with the rescue teams for as long as he could be of use. At headquarters, he was attended by Dr Anne Hall and Dr Jock Staveley who were both holidaying in the park and, as soon as the accident was reported, had told headquarters of their willingness to help.

  Paul, still trapped under the avalanche, continues his story:

  I decided the only way to free myself was to try and turn over so that I could push the ice off with both hands. To do this I had to free my right hand and I began desperately yanking it back and forth trying to free it. Every time I pulled it, I scraped a little more skin off it leaving an ugly raw area. Finally, when I freed it, the fingers were too cold and useless even to pull back my parka sleeve to look at my watch. In vain I began using my left elbow as a hammer, smashing it against the ice, trying to free my knees so that I might have been able to turn over. I could not give up hope. I had to keep trying. I didn’t even know that Olly was alive, let alone that anyone was searching for me.

  I had no idea of time, but resigned myself to the fact that if I ever did get myself free then I would most likely have to spend the night there as it would be too dark to walk down the glacier. My feet were getting cold and I began wriggling my toes to try and warm them. My right foot was the worst. I couldn’t even feel it. The prospect was frostbitten feet.

  At 2.30 pm the leading team reached the area where Paul was believed to be buried. What had been so clear from the air was entirely different from the ground. Snow had melted and there was no sign of blood from Olly’s gashed hand which might have helped in pinpointing the location. Olly’s and Paul’s climbing gear was spread over a wide area, such had been the force of the windblast created by the avalanche. All likely places in the vicinity were searched, but to no avail. Then the searchers climbed up to some rocks where they had seen a sling and karabiner. They decided these had been swept down from above as the sling was not tied.

  On the arrival of the second team, the searchers combined their efforts. Two climbers searched towards the head of the Noeline Glacier, while the others concentrated on the area above the previous search site. It was in vain. All seven searchers converged on a convenient spot to eat a hurried lunch while they discussed further search plans. They decided to ask the Air Force to fly Olly back to locate the burial spot more precisely. Two searchers were sent to Gardiner to call them. Meanwhile, the others resolved to concentrate their efforts at a higher level and in closer groups. Here they noticed some tracks made by Olly on his way down to summon help.

  Eric Saxby left the searchers to pick up some surplus gear he had unloaded at a lower level. On his return he stopped at the lunch spot to drink from a rock pool. As he bent to scoop water into his hands, he heard a faint shout for help. He was immediately alert to the possibility that one of the two returning to Gardiner had fallen into a crevasse. He straightened up and called,

  “What is it? What do you want?”

  “Over here! Over here,” returned a muffled shout. Eric sc
rambled over the rough terrain towards the call. He stopped, puzzled. There was no sign of anyone.

  To Eric’s anxious cry, “Where are you?” there came from beneath his very feet the quiet answer, “Don’t tread too hard, you are directly above me.”

  Eric dropped to his knees and frantically dug away ice and snow with his ice axe and hands, calling to his companions while he did so, but they were too far away to hear. He uncovered fingers issuing through the ice some thirty centimeters below the surface. Eric dug deeper. He could now see part of a head. He uncovered it, a metre below the surface of hard-packed snow and ice. It was now 5.00 pm.

  Paul recalled:

  During one of my bouts of scraping, hammering, punching, yanking and twisting I heard voices. I recognised one of them. I yelled as loudly as I could. There was an instant reply. I yelled again but this time there was no reply. My heart sank. I began yelling again as loud as I could. Then came a reply from right on top of me. At last a hand came through the snow.

  Eric had been unable to make himself heard to the other searchers. He left Paul for a brief period to rush to them and yell exultantly, “I’ve found him! I’ve found him! He’s alive! He’s OK!”

  Disbelief gave place to relief, then to ecstasy. The five whooped deliriously as they raced to the bright, relieved voice and grin from the hole in the ice. Eric continued digging. As the other rescuers arrived they began to dig, prepare the stretcher, arrange a safety line and unpack food. A radio message was sent to the hut-bound pair to request the return of the helicopter.