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Taranaki Community Rescue Helicopter pilot and base manager Mike Adair tells the story of the body recovery mission on Taranaki Maunga.
It was a single beam of torchlight streaming through the dark near the summit of Taranaki Maunga that let rescue helicopter pilot Mike Adair know the climbers he was searching for had been in the area. An hour-and-a-half earlier, at 10pm on Tuesday, May 4, Adair was five hours into his 72-hour on-call shift when a call came through to the Taranaki Community Rescue Helicopter hangar from police asking for help. A pair of climbers were near the top of the mountain and one of them had “slipped off the side”, he recalls.
Summer is the easiest time to summit due to limited ice and snow at the peak, says 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.
ANDY JACKSON/Stuff 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.
Police found the bodies of two climbers, who were Christchurch-based and worked for the same company, just after midnight. But due to the conditions overnight the bodies could not be recovered. Officers and Alpine Cliff Rescue staff then spent much of Wednesday on the mountain attempting a recovery, and conducting a scene examination, but were unsuccessful and all off the maunga by 5pm.
Stuff understands both men were from Christchurch and worked for environmental and engineering consultancy company Tonkin and Taylor. It is understood the two men were in Taranaki for work, but the climb was not work-related.
SIMON O CONNOR/STUFF
Glenn Jeffrey/Stuff
Liam Bishop behind the wheel of Paul Farquhar’s Kenworth mini truck replica at the Taranaki Truck Show at Hickford Park in Bell Block.
It was a case of little and large at the Taranaki Truck Show. Liam Bishop was driving this Kenworth mini truck replica and taking passengers around some of the 128 full-sized versions on display at Hickford Park, Bell Block, on Sunday. Paul Ringo Wilson, one of the organisers, estimated well over 5000 people visited the show, which was raising money for the Taranaki Community Rescue Helicopter. The Taranaki Truckers Group stages the event, which began in 2011, every two years.