MOUNTAIN RESCUE Epic tales of search and rescue in high-country New Zealand

MOUNTAIN RESCUE

Epic tales of search and rescue in high-country
New Zealand

Phillip Melchior

Random House - $50.00

Mountain Rescue tells the stories behind some of New Zealand’s most dramatic search and rescue operations in the Southern Alps and their foothills.

Ill-equipped, underprepared, suffering from summit fever or just plain unlucky, a handful of climbers every year fall victim to New Zealand’s Southern Alps. Most will be able to look back, learn from their experiences, and think they’ve had a fortunate escape. Others won't be so lucky.

Mountain Rescue opens with a significant alpine rescue in 1948, described at the time by Edmund Hillary as ‘a mountaineering rescue effort probably unique in Zealand’s alpine history’. We then travel forward to 2004 and beyond, to a series of daring rescue operations — including the tale of a young man who loses his life as he tries to rescue his girlfriend. These gut-wrenching accounts provide a fascinating insight into what happens in a contemporary rescue operation.

The 11 tales in Mountain Rescue are based on interviews with the rescued and their loved ones — or with the families of those willing to share the story of their relative’s tragic end. Equally important is the rescuers’ perspective: Melchior interviews Wanaka-based mountain guide Gary Dickson, who has 30 years of search and rescue experience in the Alps and whose ‘flea in the ear’ lectures to survivors are legendary. Yet Dickson himself rejects the ‘hero’ tag — for him and for his search and rescue teammates, ‘a hero is someone who does an extraordinary act — not someone who is doing when they’ve trained to do.’

 Heroes or not, New Zealand’s search and rescue volunteers are the ones who show up when good days in the mountains go horribly wrong. Whether they’re faced with triumphs or tragedies, their skill and commitment is undeniable.

About the author

Phillip Melchior is a passionate tramper, mountaineer and search and rescue volunteer. A former print and television journalist, he later became global managing director of Reuters Media in London. 

He has served as chairman of LandSAR New Zealand, and is now on the Boards of both the New Zealand Antarctic Research Institute and Antarctica New Zealand.

Melchior and his wife, Barbara, divide their time between Wanaka and Auckland. They have a son, a daughter and two grandsons.