Next morning, Friday, the photographic crew were airborne once more and completed their mission. By the evening all the material was processed and being studied in Santiago by Bob. There seemed to be two areas worth closer investigation. One photograph showed what looked like human figures close to an area of hot springs and the other showed skid marks on the snow.
Added to this, the news that Carlos had found the flag on the summit confirmed that the Lama had in fact reached the top of Ojos, probably a little over half an hour after take-off. This meant that, calculating from the Lama’s depleted fuel reserves, the search could now be concentrated in a much tighter area round the mountain.
Iain Thomson made another flight as observer in the Cheyenne on Saturday the 21st and checked the two suspicious areas spotted in the photographs. Both proved negative.
That day, about lunchtime, Louis Murray’s son, Michael, arrived in Santiago from South Africa and spent the remainder of the day and that night with Bob Lyall and family. It was arranged to fly him over the Ojos area the following morning to show him where his father and César went missing. At dawn the Cheyenne took off with Henry Stucke, Anglo’s technical director for Latin America, who had come over from Sao Paulo, Iain Thomson and Michael on board. When they were overflying the eastern side of the summit the pilot Pablo Pfingsthron glimpsed a brief flash of light, on a patch of snow high on the mountain. They circled and Iain Thomson was able to recognise the missing Lama. There was no sign of life. SAR in Copiapó and the ground parties were advised of the find. The Twin Otter and the helicopters were scrambled and homed in on the location which was at 22,000 feet. As the Twin Otter tried to approach, closer than the Cheyenne was able, the wind was registering 100 knots and the plane was actually moving backwards at one stage. The helicopters couldn’t get to the crashed Lama either, but they managed to report that the machine seemed more or less intact and there didn’t appear to be anyone inside. This raised the hopes of the rescuers once more, for they knew that if Louis and César had managed to use the oxygen on board the helicopter, and get to the heat-giving fumaroles, they might just have survived the otherwise low temperatures. For the rest of the day flying conditions were desperate. Once Henry had described the location of the crash, “a snow patch like a map of South America, with the Lama in the position of Buenos Aires”, Bob easily spotted the aircraft in several photographs, which goes to show that specialised knowledge is just as essential for interpreting aerial photographs as for on-the-spot search.
Flying conditions were better on Monday the 23rd, and the Twin Otter was able to make a near pass to the crashed helicopter and later a Lama flew close in. A figure wearing an orange jacket was still in the passenger’s seat, but the exact position of Louis was difficult to establish.
Now all energy was concentrated on getting climbing parties to the crash and after a great deal of effort, between 27 April and 2 May, members of the Santiago rescue group, Cuerpo de Socorro Andino, under Alejo Contreras Stateding, together with Anglo-American personnel, succeeded in reaching the Lama. They had been instructed by SAR only to photograph the situation. In fact, the machine was so delicately balanced that there was a danger of it falling over if they had tried to recover the bodies. Both men must have died instantly in the impact, which had also sheared off the automatic electronic distress beacon.
There remained the formidable task of recovering the bodies of the victims, for early May is the start of winter in the area, with lowering summit temperatures, higher winds, and the possibility of severe snow storms. However, the Anglo-American team were determined to complete the task, if at all possible – they were fit and acclimatised, but lacked the technical experience necessary. So they engaged the support of four experienced Chilean mountaineers, led by Jorge Quinteros, and now, well equipped and organised, set out once again towards the summit. A bulldozer was called in, which cut a track suitable for four-wheel-drive vehicles from the refuge at the base of the mountain to a height of about 20,000 feet, and the bulldozer itself managed to assist in transporting equipment to Carlos’ campsite at 20,300 feet. By 12 May the helicopter had toppled over in the wind and in two separate expeditions the bodies were recovered and taken down for burial.
As a tribute to Louis Murray, Anglo-American built the Louis Murray Lodge at 15,000 feet close to Laguna Verde on the wide-open desert country, and installed a new climbers’ refuge, dedicated to César Tejos, at the end of the road up the mountain built during the rescue operation. It has never been established with certainty what caused the crash, but recently parts of the engine have been salvaged, possibly the highest salvage operation ever.
Middle Peak Hotel
Bob Munro
I first got acquainted with the New Zealand Alps in 1953 and spent two years mainly climbing and prospecting there. South Island is a wonderful place with a unique feeling of freedom.
This story is about an accident on Mount Cook, an enforced stay in a storm close to the summit. The peak was well named Aorangi, the Cloud Piercer, by the Maoris. Indeed clouds regularly envelop it and winds rush in from the Tasman Sea which is only a skip and jump away, to lash its icy flanks.
As a young man I often climbed unroped in the Central Alps on technically easy but exposed ground and was subsequently told off by pundits such as Mick Bowie and Harry Aires, two of New Zealand’s great mountain guides. Nowadays such “rashness” is more accepted as a valuable means of saving precious time on long routes.
Despite my early misdemeanours I am still in close contact with these rugged mountaineers of the antipodes and this tale of Mount Cook was written by Bob Munro, a guide who worked for Alpine Guides and played an important part in this rescue operation. It illustrates the close ties that now exist between the helicopter and the rescue team.
Mark Inglis and Phil Doole flew by ski-plane into Plateau hut on the eastern flanks of Mount Cook on 15 November 1982 for a quick climb of this mountain during their days off before going back to work on the National Park alpine rescue team.
They actually returned two weeks later after doubling the record for survival above 10,000 feet (3,000 metres) in the Southern Alps, amidst the most intense media-generated public interest ever in an incident in the New Zealand mountains.
Inglis was a full-time mountaineer for the National Park after having given up a promising ranger training course to pursue his life in the mountains. Married, with a young daughter, he is small, almost frail-looking, but he had put up enough good climbs and been involved in rescue operations himself that he took over that season as the leader of one of two specialised alpine rescue teams based at Mount Cook.
Phil Doole, a qualified surveyor, was working his first season as a rescue mountaineer. Phil had already shown his capacity for survival in the mountains three years earlier during another alpine drama. An avalanche had claimed the lives of two people in an accident in the Upper Linda Glacier of Mount Cook. Doole and his companion were hurrying down to raise the alarm when his companion fell in a crevasse, the rope jerked tight and Doole was catapulted into the crevasse, breaking his leg and arm. With minimum clothing (the rest had been donated to the survivors of the first accident), he lay for two days in the crevasse and was finally rescued with thirty centimetres of new snow on top of him.
The climb the two had decided on is one of the classics of the New Zealand Alps. Rising in a series of sharp ridges to where it blends with the Caroline Face of Mount Cook, the East Ridge offers a lengthy snow and ice climb until it tops out at the Middle Peak right in the centre of the mile-long summit ridge.
The pair trudged over the Grand Plateau that first afternoon and spent the night in a crevasse at the base of the climb. They were planning a fast ascent and were lightly equipped. They had pile clothing and windproof outer garments but no bivouac sac, sleeping bags or stoves.
They began the climb at 5.00 am, finding that early in the season there was still plenty of unconsolidated snow on the ridge and hard ice conditions on the upper part of the f
ace, making the going slow and painstaking. They could see as they climbed that the wind was starting to whip across the summit ridge but figured even if it was strong they would be able to force their way over the top and get quickly below the crest on the western side via Porter Col.
They weren’t to know that they were at the beginning of one of the worst summers that region experienced. In fact a very unusual set of circumstances was developing that played the dominant role for the next two weeks in their lives and was part of a global weather imbalance. The Southern Oscillation index, a measurement of the relative strengths between two of the Pacific’s most important weather balancing acts – the Australian-Indonesian low and the high-pressure system east of Tahiti – had begun one of its periodic shifts. Pressures rose in the centre of the low system bringing widespread drought in Australia, while the Central Eastern Pacific experienced devastating cyclones. The phenomenon “El Nino” affected most continents that year except Europe. The normally positioned Pacific high decayed until the pressure imbalance between Tahiti and Darwin was the strongest ever. In New Zealand this meant the establishment of a strong south-west jet stream in the upper air layers that showed unusual persistence.
Doole and Inglis started their climb just as this system was beginning and by 6.00 pm when they finally crested the summit ridge of Mount Cook they were caught right in the teeth of it. Mount Cook juts up 12,349 feet (3,765 metres) only twenty miles from the Tasman Sea, so any winds from the west are usually speeded up as they pass over this impressive barrier to their path. The East Ridge is ideally sheltered from these winds but there is no respite on the summit ridge itself.
Frozen from belaying each other and unable to make any progress against the wind, they crept into a small crevasse between the middle peak of Mount Cook and Porter Col, the gateway to safety. There is usually a good bergschrund in that area and it’s often used as a planned bivouac. A guided party had spent a week in nearly the same spot three years before, trapped by weather, but also equipped with sleeping bags, and they emerged with only minor frostbite.
The bergschrund this year was small, about the size of a single bed – open-ended so that spindrift constantly blew through.
Over the next couple of days they made several attempts to get out, laboriously roping up then realising as they poked their heads out that there was no chance of survival beyond the bergschrund, and reluctantly being forced back inside to the feeling of utter helplessness at not being able to solve their predicament.
In the village concern had been growing since the first evening when they hadn’t come on the regular 7.00 pm radio schedule at Empress hut on the western side of Mount Cook, their final goal from the top of the climb.
On the third day of their enforced stay they were obviously in trouble. That day at lower elevations a party of climbers had managed to get out from Gardiner Hut on the lower slopes of Mount Cook up the Hooker Valley, so if Inglis and Doole were in a position to move, that was the day.
As a precaution a park rescue team that had been training on the mountain range above the Mount Cook village was flown out in case it was needed the next day.
Most mountain search and rescue in New Zealand is undertaken by volunteer groups under police supervision but at Mount Cook specialised professional teams have evolved, largely to combat the serious and frequent nature of mountain search and rescues in the area.
While not tall mountains by world standards, the Southern Alps are rugged, heavily glaciated and with often dubious-quality rock. The weather changes rapidly and the storms can be as powerful as those in Patagonia or Antarctica.
Searches at Mount Cook are controlled by the Chief Ranger and usually involved helicopter support, either the air force with Iroquois machines or the local civilian pilot, Ron Small, with his Aerospatiale Squirrel. Small and his helicopter became the central piece in the unfolding drama.
The fact that the rescue received such intense media coverage was largely due to Chief Ranger Bert Youngman. In the highly emotive world of mountain accidents the press is usually kept at bay through irregularly issued reports via the police. At the beginning of this long search local television teams were allowed into the crew room during the operation, but as the waves of new reporters built up this was stopped, although press conferences continued. In fact the presence of the news media in such force and the gathering public interest in the events sometimes overshadowed the rescue itself.
By the Friday morning, Day 4 for Inglis and Doole, the park team were on full search and rescue standby. This meant that all other work was suspended and they had to be in full climbing kit with everything packed ready to go at a moment’s notice. The only problem was that because of the raging storm nobody was going anywhere.
The pattern that was to become so familiar over the next week established itself that day: getting geared up, doing the mental exercise that would enable the mind and brain to be roughly in the same place as the body might find itself being whisked to in this age of rapid helicopter transport. But the team just had to sit there. And sit there, like the runner being called to the blocks but never getting the release of the gun. The nervous tension builds up but is never channelled into action.
On the mountain by this time Inglis and Doole realised that they were past being able to help themselves. Mark Inglis wrote:
So much spindrift entered our alcove that it would have been very foolish to utilise our body heat to warm our feet. This resulted in the main complication of our stay. In my case, the frostbite started after the second night and was due mainly to excessive sweating during the climb, which drenched my inner boots and my two pairs of dry socks. Limited massage and elevation of our feet was as much as we could do.
A great deal of our time in the hole was spent lying, completely switched off. Every day we checked outside and each time we were nearly blown to kingdom come! Cold was with us all the time. Though seldom warm we only shivered after moving around, upon going outside or in the middle of the night. I am still convinced that in our situation, doing as little as possible was the best decision. From the first day we rationed food; not consciously – merely from habit. An average day was two biscuits and two or three spoonfuls of drink concentrate. Water was at a premium. Snow in the spare water bottle was melted by body heat under my clothing. This in itself tended to draw a large amount of heat from the body. I weighed 46 kilos (7 stone 3 pounds) on entering hospital, 13 kilos (28 pounds) lighter than normal.
The weather worsened through Saturday and Sunday. Snow fell to low levels and the Ball Hut Road from Mount Cook village to the Tasman Glacier lookout was closed because of the avalanche danger.
At Tasman Saddle Hut at the head of the glacier at 7,500 feet (2,250 metres) the recording anemometer was ripped off its bolts by the wind, landing 50 metres away.
There was the odd brief lull between the rapidly advancing fronts on the Sunday, and cloud had cleared back on the lower part of the East Ridge to enable pilot Ron Small to recce part of the route that the climbers had taken. No sign was seen but the rescuers got a nasty fright when cloud developed suddenly, completely enveloping the helicopter as it was hovering just above the rocks and snow on the ridge. A brief hole in the cloud allowed a narrow escape for the Squirrel’s occupants.
During the next two days a widespread weather watch was begun, supplementing the meteorological service in Christchurch and with observers ringing the Mount Cook area, looking for the briefest opening to stage a search attempt.
The daily routine for the searchers involved a flurry of predawn activity followed by tense waiting through first light as this appeared to offer the best time for a respite from the wind and cloud. Then when nothing eventuated, ringing relatives to inform them of the situation and dealing with the ever-growing press corps.
Anything at all could have happened to the two climbers but if they were still alive after nearly a week out, then their only hope would have been the known bergschrund near the Middle Peak.
Ar
rangements were made to bring Dr Dick Price from Oamaru, 120 kilometres away, if they were found alive. Dr Price is a specialist in mountain medicine and frostbite, with experience of many New Zealand Himalayan expeditions.
By Sunday evening small progress had been made with the cloud lifting on the eastern flanks of the mountain, enough to enable two mountaineers to be landed at the Plateau Hut where they confirmed Inglis’ and Doole’s intentions from the hut log book.
On Monday 22 November (Day 7) the cloud base had lifted a little and just after 9.00 am Ron Small flew four climbers up the Hooker, hoping to land them on the white ice from where they could struggle up to Gardiner hut. He actually touched down on bare ice above the hut and as everybody clambered out his forward-speed indicator registered eighty knots! Helicopters have been taking the drudgery and hard work out of alpine rescue for some time now. The Squirrel was showing that it could function at the edge of climbable conditions.
That evening though, the wind briefly relented. Although great orographic banner clouds swirled out in the lee of Mount Cook, the summit ridge became visible for the first time in a week, and the rescue staff at Gardiner Hut reported patches of blue sky above them.
Ron Small was in the air again. Here is the rescue log for that evening:
1914 hrs
HWW [call sign of Small’s helicopter] have located one climber, red jacket waving from schrund to NW Porter Col.
1922 hrs
Dr Dick Price on way to Mount Cook.
1932 hrs
HWW – have lost drop bag. Request from Don Bogie to prepare climbing team to drop on lower Empress.
1935 hrs
HWW returns to Park Headquarters.
The Mammoth Book of Mountain Disasters Page 50