Ruapehu Alpine Rescue Organisation

Over the last weekend RARO and TACR teams got together to undertake joint training organised and facilitated by LandSAR. The challenge was to search for, locate and rescue four missing subjects. The terrain that we moved the subjects through involved low angle simple terrain through to fully vertical cliffs. All in all, a great weekend and a big thanks to Jim Spencer, Hobbie and Pete Zimmer for all the organisational grunt that went in to making it happen! The main learning points and actions to come from this have been focused on getting refamiliarised with system analyses to ensure that we are making appropriate decisions on system complexity. Overall, keeping things simple so that the patient can be moved safely and swiftly off the mountain is the key to success in this type of operation.

On the 17/7/14 a climbing party were near the top of the Grand Gully in the Pinnacles on the North Side of Mt Ruapehu adjacent to the Whakapapa Ski Area when one of the members fell the entire way to the Broken Leg Gully. Ruapehu Alpine Lifts (RAL) ski patrollers were alerted to the fall by witnesses and a RARO operation was initiated. Once on scene the patrollers managed the patient who had a head injury amongst other suspected spinal injuries due to the high mechanics involved in the fall. He was moved down from the Broken Leg Gulley to the Whakapapa Urgent Care Clinic managed by RAL so that he could be seen by the medical team there prior to being transferred to hospital. The rest of the climbing party was left stranded at the top of Grand Gully and a RARO team climbed to their aid – eventually getting picked up by the Greenlea Rescue Helicopter. Overall, a good reminder that these incidents happen and that RARO needs to retain technical climbing competency within it’s membership.

We have had our first of the early winter snowfalls and the sun was out today making the perfect conditions for ill prepared climbers to get out of their depth. One unfortunate fellow from Germany got a little freaked out up at Tukino peak today and called DoC for assistance. The Fly My Sky 500 was used to take two rescuers up for a look at about 2:30pm. Contact was made with the stranded individual however shifty winds made landing or even hovering impossible at the site. After a drop off further down the ridge the rescuers walked to the party and short roped him back down to the pick up point. All home safe and sound. Bring on winter!

A few RARO members assembled at Whakapapa for a quick cliff raise and lower demo for the SAREX attendees this last weekend. It was a great chance to blow out some cobwebs.

On the 11-2-14 RAL received a call from a lost hiker who had left the Whakapapa car park that morning and was now lost in the fog. His route up turned out to be the skyline marked trail and he kept on climbing from there to reach the crater plateau. He thought he had made it to the crater lake and took a photo of it. See below.

From there it gets patchy. Several raro teams were deployed (see the attached google earth image)to initiate quick sound sweeps and checks of high probability areas. A translator was engaged to communicate via cell phone with the missing party as they only really spoke Swiss German. He had an altimeter and compass on his watch and could see some buildings. After fruitless sound sweeps on the Whakapapa side it was suspected that he was actually on the Tukino side of the mountain and in the end that was where he was located by military police from waiouru. Below is a rough layout of how it all unfolded in a static image. Contact Andy for a .kmz (google earth) file that you can interact with.

A team of RARO members headed into the Mangaturuturu hut from the Ohakune road to be on standby for any potential injuries as around 600 competitors made their way from Whakapapa to Turoa in the 10th annual Goat mountain run. The day started out nicely but around 10:00am a cold front swept through the park bringing strong winds and poor vis with rain. In the end we only had two patients to manage, one upper limb injury and one badly sprained ankle. Both were flown from the track by the Greenlea Taupo Rescue Chopper once the weather cleared up a little. All in all, it was well worth us being out there and a successful day out. Cheers to the crew that made it!

At about 11:30 am on the 24th of November a male tourist from Germany took a fall from somewhere in the upper Te Heu Heu valley while waking by himself. During the fall he fractured his left femur which was compound (open) and bleeding. He dragged himself after tying his legs together, for over the snow for some distance calling for help. He lost his cell phone in the fall. Two hikers happened to hear his calls for help and called the emergency services. A RARO member was flown to the site from the base of Whakapapa and located the scene. An assessment was made and the patient was packaged and given pain relief before being hover loaded into the TAUPO Greenlea rescue helicopter for transport to staging area and then on to hospital.

On the 27th October RARO received a callout for assistance with an operation underway on the north ridge of Taranaki. We managed a good turnout of 15 members and were instructed to drive to north Egmont for further tasking from there. Conditions were reasonably testing higher on the mountain as we fixed ropes up towards the last known point for the missing party. A strong crew of raro members with the help of our man Phil from Taranaki alpine club pushed on and managed to find the party of two. Unfortunately, hypothermia took its path with the missing climbers and we came down empty handed. Everyone involved gave it their best efforts, sometimes that’s the way it goes.

Last week we lost a member of RARO. Jack the avalanche dog had a short but really enthusiastic career in the mountains. With his handler Benn Cash they managed to go from strength to strength and within a season of beginning formal snow work, they passed the assessment to make operational status. As a work team, Benn and Jack were perfectly suited to each other and if there was someone in need or a training session on, you’d better get out of the way!
Unfortunately, Jack finally lost the battle he had been fighting hard this whole winter. Our thoughts are with Benn and Skylie who gave him such an awesome second chance at helping save lives in the mountains.

We’ll miss you jack!