Three trampers have been rescued from Mount Taranaki, two of them with serious injuries.<\/p>\n
Police said the situation could have ended in tragedy had the weather not cleared, allowing a rescue helicopter to reach the trio.<\/p>\n
Acting Sergeant David Bentley said the alarm was raised about 10:30am, with a rescue helicopter sent to find the trampers, who were all on different parts of the mountain.<\/p>\n
Because of the weather, the helicopter winched in an alpine search and rescue team member, who walked down to find them.<\/p>\n
One was stuck due to the icy conditions, with photos taken by a search and rescue member showing thick ice and snow covering a mountain hut and vegetation.<\/p>\n
Once the weather cleared, the rescue helicopter was deployed again and all three trampers were taken off the mountain around 4:30pm and taken to receive medical care.<\/p>\n
Ruapehu Alpine Rescue Organisation, Taranaki alpine cliff rescue and St John were “invaluable in their efforts to help everyone off the mountain safely”, Mr Bentley said.<\/p>\n
“Without the Taranaki community rescue teams’ efforts today and had the weather not cleared in time it was very likely the situation would have ended tragically.”<\/p>\n
Police search and rescue urged only extremely experienced and competent climbers to visit the area in current conditions.<\/p>\n
“If you are heading into alpine or remote areas, please ensure you are an experienced tramper as anything can occur on the mountain,” Mr Bentley said.<\/p>\n
“Plan carefully and carry appropriate emergency equipment, including a PLB.”<\/p>\n
Taranaki Alpine Club Glen Hodges has been involved in searches on the mountain over the years and said the mountain was currently “glazed” with rime – an icy crust formed by the water from fog freezing.<\/p>\n
“Anything above 1400 metres is really hard at the moment – you can’t really walk on it unless you’re quite skilled.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three trampers have been rescued from Mount Taranaki, two of them with serious injuries. Police said the situation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-522077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}