The wife of businessman and philanthropist Gareth Morgan had set out in the early Wednesday morning dark to summit the mountain in Aoraki/Mt Cook when the avalanche came flowing out of the darkness above.
She was roped to experienced German mountaineers Wolfgang Maier and Martin Hess when she heard an alert from them calling to her to hurry up.
Then the earth under her feet began moving and through the light of her head torch she could just make out a "huge wave" sweeping towards her, Morgan told Newstalk ZB today.
It was "just like being in the surf", she said.
"This big fluffy wave of ice coming towards me, and [it had] no sound – it was all quiet."
The avalanche swept Morgan about 200m down the mountain, but being close to the surface she was able to dig herself out and set off an emergency beacon that allowed rescue teams to find her.
Maier and Hess, who were both very good friends of Morgan, did not survive.
The trio had not reached the summit Mt Hicks before the avalanche struck and when asked if she would ever go back to try again, Morgan said she didn't "really have any inclination".
"Whether at some stage - if the conditions look absolutely amazing - I would do it, I can't tell," she said.
"If I did do it – it would have to be in memory of those boys.
"And maybe the other way to go is to leave it there as a closed book.
"It's shrugged me off, Hicks doesn't want me."
