Two climbers have been rescued from Mount Aspiring after one fell 200m down a cliff face and into a crevasse, believed dead as his companion climbed to the summit alone to raise the alarm.
Police received a report of the fall on one of the country's tallest mountains at around 6.15pm on Tuesday.
Wānaka Sergeant Darren Cranfield said the uninjured companion was faced with an "extremely challenging situation", climbing for more than three hours to find reception to call for help.
The rescue was coordinated by police, who tasked Helicopters Otago's alpine division alongside the volunteer Wakatipu Alpine Cliff Rescue team.
Helicopters Otago chief executive Graeme Gale said the rescue at 3033m was one of the most significant his crews had undertaken.
"This isn't an everyday rescue. This is high altitude, at the top of Mount Aspiring — one of the worst things we go to, that potentially has a bad outcome."
Alpine rescue specialist Jono Gillan, who was aboard the aircraft, said the crew initially believed they were retrieving one survivor and recovering the body of the climber who had fallen.
"There was an understanding that one of the members of the party had fallen a significant distance down the west face of Mount Aspiring. There was a high likelihood that he may be deceased," Gillan told 1News.
Crews first reached the surviving climber on the summit by chopper, landing with a single skid touching a snow shelf rather than requiring a full winch extraction.
"It requires lots of training, skill and experience to conduct a manoeuvre like that," Gillan said.
Rescue crew see a light 600m below the summit
"If there's any thought that it's not going to be able to [be done] safely, we'll find another way to do it — that would be dropping members off lower on the hill to climb up. But the conditions were favourable."
While flying in, the crew noticed a light roughly 600m below the summit but could not immediately confirm its source, and considered it might belong to an unrelated climbing party.
Upon investigating though, the crew found the climber who had fallen — alive and moving under his own power.
"To go and find someone that's actually on his feet … was significant to everyone, really," Gale said.
Both climbers were off the mountain by about 1am, roughly seven hours after the fall was first reported.
Cranfield described the rescue as complex and high-stakes throughout. "This was a complex and dynamic operation where two lives were at risk," he said.
Both Gale and Gillan credited the outcome to close cooperation between Helicopters Otago's air crew and the volunteer alpine rescue sector.
"It's the collaboration that we have with the Wakatipu Alpine Cliff Rescue people on doing this," Gale said.
"We do extensive training with them, and we can't thank them enough for the support that they give us when we require their expertise, because they're the experts."
Mount Aspiring, located west of Lake Wānaka, is the country's ninth highest mountain, and the tallest outside Aoraki Mount Cook National Park.
The maunga, often referred to as the "Matterhorn of the South" due to its pyramidal peak, lends its name to the surrounding Mount Aspiring National Park.
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