After three days of evidence, it took a jury 30 minutes to clear a man on charges of sexual violation at a Queenstown mountain.
The jury in the Invercargill District Court found the man not guilty on eight charges stemming from an incident the Crown argued was a violent rape at a rest-stop by Coronet Peak, on the morning of December 8, 2022.
During the trial the court heard that after a night of partying in the ski-town the pair travelled up the mountain before sunset.
The defence argued that they both went to the gravel-covered rest-stop to engage in consenting sexual activity, while the Crown alleged the complainant thought she was getting a ride home to her husband.

“I’ve just got a phone call from my wife’s pocket, it sounds like she’s being raped,” her now ex-husband told the emergency operator.
The court also heard a recording of the call emergency services made to the woman after, in which she pretended to be talking to her friend while surreptitiously giving her location and sending them a photo of the man she was with.
The phone call also recorded the moment her then husband, tracking her location, arrived in his SUV and confronted the defendant.
In his closing argument, defence counsel Peter Redpath said the “sharp” way the woman spoke to police was like “night and day” compared with the way she acted around her husband when he showed up seconds later.
“She’s sharp in how she responds, she has to be sharp to keep up the ruse that she's talking to her friend, doesn’t she?” he told the jury.
“That was sustained for over four minutes and then, almost like a flick of the switch ... the incapacitated victim she wanted to display.”
Previously the court heard the complainant say she was using “survival instincts” while talking to police and “shut down” when her husband arrived, and she knew that she was “safe”.
The complainant said that because of a crash that happened on the hair-pin turn before the lookout she “blacked out” and didn’t know how she came to be in the backseat of the man's car, being penetrated.
"The fuzziness is at convenient points in time that are very compromising for her,” said Mr Redpath.
Mr Redpath also told the jury the woman didn’t tell police in her initial interview that she had earlier kissed the defendant and lied to her husband and her friend so she could go off with him.
“She knew... she left it out deliberately... left it out of her narrative,” said Mr Redpath.
The kiss at a service station forecourt earlier in the night was captured on CCTV cameras.
“Consent must be up the mountain not at the Caltex,” crown prosecutor Mike Brownlie told the jury.