Two snowboarders who left the marked area at Treble Cone spent about six hours lost in heavy snow and near-zero visibility on Thursday, and were found by rescuers roughly an hour before dark.
Police were alerted at about 1.45pm on Thursday 30 July that the pair needed help near the Wānaka ski field. In a statement released on Saturday, Sergeant Darren Cranfield said the two had gone beyond the boundaries of the ski field to explore the back country before becoming lost. Heavy snowfall, strong winds and almost no visibility meant they could not find their own way back.
“The search was complex and required the expertise of the Wānaka Alpine Cliff Rescue Team, multiple ski patrol units, and an aerial search team,” Cranfield said.
Aspiring Helicopters flew in what the Otago Daily Times reported were very difficult flying conditions. The paper described the two snowboarders as inexperienced. They were found before the light went, which is the detail police keep returning to.
“The snowboarders were located approximately one hour before nightfall. Had they not been found before darkness, the outcome could have been significantly more serious,” Cranfield said.
He said the case was another timely reminder that going past ski area boundaries into the back country should never be taken lightly, and that anyone heading into the alpine environment needs the right experience, an understanding of current weather and avalanche conditions, proper emergency equipment and the skills to use it. “Even a minor mistake can quickly develop into a life-threatening situation in alpine terrain,” he said.
It was the second alpine callout for Wānaka police in a week. On the Tuesday, a climber fell about 200 metres into a crevasse on the west face of Mount Aspiring while descending after reaching the summit, and his companion climbed for more than three hours in the dark to find enough satellite reception to raise the alarm. Both men were reached at about 1am by Heli Otago and the Wakatipu LandSAR Alpine Cliff Rescue Team. RNZ reported that the two rescues together prompted police to ask people to take more care in the mountains.
The boundary rope at a New Zealand ski field is not a decoration, and the fields themselves are blunt about what it means. Treble Cone publishes its back country policy online, including gate closing times of 2.20pm at Towers, 2.45pm at Summit and a last chair at 3.30pm. The same policy states that the field “does not conduct avalanche control or provide Ski Patrol services beyond the ski area boundary”, and that it “is not obligated to provide assistance outside the ski area boundary, but we will always do our best to respond”.
The field advises anyone crossing that line to carry a working avalanche transceiver, a shovel, a probe, a map and a communication device such as a mobile phone or a personal locator beacon, to travel in a group, and to make sure every member of that group knows how to use the gear. Carrying a transceiver is not much use if nobody in the party has practised a search with one.
The wider numbers put Thursday in context. The New Zealand Mountain Safety Council reviewed 25 years of avalanche incidents and counted 798 reported incidents and 27 deaths between 1998 and 2023. The Queenstown region recorded more than any other. Most incidents happened in winter and early spring, with September the single most common month, at elevations between 1,750 and 2,000 metres and most often on south-easterly slopes. The typical slide was a small slab, usually a wind slab, and it was usually triggered accidentally by a back country skier. The people most often involved were men aged between 26 and 35.
The finding worth pausing on is what the avalanche forecast said at the time. The council found recreational incidents were most common when the danger rating sat at moderate, the second of five levels, rather than at the high ratings that make people cancel their plans. A moderate rating is the one people talk themselves past.
Avalanches are also not the only way a day goes wrong, and on Thursday they were not the problem at all. The council notes that getting lost is one of the most common issues in back country snow sports callouts, because alpine weather changes quickly and terrain with few recognisable features becomes very hard to read once visibility drops. That is close to a description of what happened above Treble Cone, where the snow arrived, the wind came up and two people who had crossed a line could no longer work out which way was back.
Search and rescue demand has been creeping up. Mountain Safety Council monitoring of seven outdoor activities puts the five-year average at about 699 people involved in search and rescue operations each year and the ten-year average at about 716. The council attributes the trend to a growing population, more adults taking up these activities, and the spread of back country communication devices, which means more incidents are reported rather than quietly survived.
That last point cuts both ways. A beacon or a satellite message is why the climber on Mount Aspiring was found alive in a crevasse at 1am rather than the following day, and it is why so many stories from the Southern Lakes this winter have ended with a helicopter rather than a funeral. It also means volunteers are flying and climbing into worsening weather to reach people who did not have the experience for the terrain they entered.
New Zealand’s snow season still has more than two months to run, and the school holidays and long weekends ahead will push more people onto the fields around Wānaka and Queenstown than at any other point in the year. Most of them will never leave the groomed runs. For those who plan to, the advice from police is unglamorous and specific. Know the forecast, know the avalanche conditions, carry the gear, know how to use it, tell someone where you are going and leave enough daylight to get back.
Have you been caught out by a change in the weather in the mountains, or volunteered with an alpine rescue team? Tell us about it in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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