'Oh my god, she’s alive': Climber survives 600m fall

Westpac Rescue Helicopter begins the rescue of a woman who fell 600m down Mt Rolleston.
Westpac Rescue Helicopter begins the rescue of a woman who fell 600m down Mt Rolleston.
“Oh my god, she’s alive.”

That was the reaction from Reuben McCormack, who was part of the dramatic rescue of a climber who fell 600m on Mt Rolleston, near Arthur’s Pass, on Saturday.

The off-duty policeman had been climbing in the area when he chanced upon the climbing partner of the woman who had fallen, a 25-year-old from Christchurch.

“We all assumed she would’ve died. With a fall like that, it’s not normally survivable. And the fact she went over several bluffs, too,” he said.

Off-duty policeman Senior Constable Reuben McCormack was involved in the dramatic rescue of a...
Off-duty policeman Senior Constable Reuben McCormack was involved in the dramatic rescue of a climber.
Senior Constable McCormack, who is also a search and rescue team member, said he saw the woman’s climbing partner, called Chris, just above him on the mountain.

“Only the lead person, Chris, saw where she fell,” Senior Constable McCormack said.

“He said to us: ‘I’ve lost Lauren’. We said: ‘What do you mean you’ve lost her?’ And he said: ‘Down there’ and pointed down into the Bealey Valley, which is a huge drop.

“We thought: ‘Oh, that’s not survivable’. Then we decided to re-group ourselves and make a plan to get Chris safe and get people down to find her.”

Once the helicopter had arrived, a radio was winched down to Senior Constable McCormack, who explained what had happened.

“They then went down the valley and they saw her in a gully.

“They told us on the radio: ‘She’s waving at us!’ And that was the first we knew that. ‘Oh my god, she’s alive’ that was a very exciting moment for us. Just to know she was alive.”

The woman was then winched off the mountain. She had non-life-threatening injuries, including multiple limb fractures, friction burns, a suspected spinal injury and multiple lacerations to her body, Garden City Helicopters general manager Simon Duncan said.

Prior to the rescue, two other experienced climbers had abseiled down into the valley to find the fallen climber and disaster nearly struck again.

“Well, you don’t normally climb in that valley, because it is very difficult to get out. They were quite experienced climbers, one of them was a Red Cross medic in Lebanon,” Senior Constable McCormack said.

“They were about 100m away. But the helicopter got to her first, which was great.”

The climbers then heard a rumble.

"We were still up on the ridge and then there was an avalanche that came down, within metres of the two guys. I was watching it from up in the valley. I heard the rumble and they started running.

“They ran onto the rocks and the avalanche passed within metres of them. We were lucky they didn’t get smoked into that,” he said.