![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/the-climber-who-fell-was-found-around-600m-from-the-summit-o-VLKOFUDSNBFE5J32KWCWHFFXVQ.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTwo climbers have been rescued from Mount Aspiring after one fell 200m down a cliff face and into a crevasse, believed dead as his companion climbed to the summit alone to raise the alarm.<\/p>\n
Police received a report of the fall on one of the country’s tallest mountains at around 6.15pm on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
W\u0101naka Sergeant Darren Cranfield said the uninjured companion was faced with an “extremely challenging situation”, climbing for more than three hours to find reception to call for help.<\/p>\n
The rescue was coordinated by police, who tasked Helicopters Otago’s alpine division alongside the volunteer Wakatipu Alpine Cliff Rescue team.<\/p>\n
Helicopters Otago chief executive Graeme Gale said the rescue at 3033m was one of the most significant his crews had undertaken.<\/p>\n
“This isn’t an everyday rescue. This is high altitude, at the top of Mount Aspiring \u2014 one of the worst things we go to, that potentially has a bad outcome.”<\/p>\n
Alpine rescue specialist Jono Gillan, who was aboard the aircraft, said the crew initially believed they were retrieving one survivor and recovering the body of the climber who had fallen.<\/p>\n
“There was an understanding that one of the members of the party had fallen a significant distance down the west face of Mount Aspiring. There was a high likelihood that he may be deceased,” Gillan told 1News.<\/p>\n
Crews first reached the surviving climber on the summit by chopper, landing with a single skid touching a snow shelf rather than requiring a full winch extraction.<\/p>\n
“It requires lots of training, skill and experience to conduct a manoeuvre like that,” Gillan said. <\/p>\n
Rescue crew see a light 600m below the summit <\/p>\n
“If there’s any thought that it’s not going to be able to [be done] safely, we’ll find another way to do it \u2014 that would be dropping members off lower on the hill to climb up. But the conditions were favourable.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The climber who fell was found around 600m from the summit of Mount Aspiring. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
While flying in, the crew noticed a light roughly 600m below the summit but could not immediately confirm its source, and considered it might belong to an unrelated climbing party.<\/p>\n
Upon investigating though, the crew found the climber who had fallen \u2014 alive and moving under his own power.<\/p>\n
“To go and find someone that’s actually on his feet \u2026 was significant to everyone, really,” Gale said.<\/p>\n
Both climbers were off the mountain by about 1am, roughly seven hours after the fall was first reported.<\/p>\n
Cranfield described the rescue as complex and high-stakes throughout. “This was a complex and dynamic operation where two lives were at risk,” he said. <\/p>\n
Both Gale and Gillan credited the outcome to close cooperation between Helicopters Otago’s air crew and the volunteer alpine rescue sector.<\/p>\n
“It’s the collaboration that we have with the Wakatipu Alpine Cliff Rescue people on doing this,” Gale said. <\/p>\n
“We do extensive training with them, and we can’t thank them enough for the support that they give us when we require their expertise, because they’re the experts.”<\/p>\n
Mount Aspiring, located west of Lake W\u0101naka, is the country’s ninth highest mountain, and the tallest outside Aoraki Mount Cook National Park.<\/p>\n
The maunga, often referred to as the “Matterhorn of the South” due to its pyramidal peak, lends its name to the surrounding Mount Aspiring National Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two climbers have been rescued from Mount Aspiring after one fell 200m down a cliff face and into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1081,111,43,139,69,1241],"class_list":["post-549260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-accident","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-west-coast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549260","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=549260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}