CLINGING ON

Climbers Miraculously Survive 3 Nights Trapped on Mountainside in Extreme Weather

The pair were left hanging on for dear life in the “unforgiving alpine environment.”

A pair of mountaineers were saved on Friday after enduring three nights clinging to the face of a cliff in New Zealand. Police said a personal locator beacon was activated on Wednesday around 4:30 p.m., but poor visibility and rainfall prevented them from dispatching a helicopter rescue. By Thursday, one of the climber’s siblings had also raised the alarm with authorities, claiming to have received “Emergency SOS satellite text messages” from the mountainside near Sabre Peak in Fiordland National Park. “The messages confirmed both of the experienced climbers were uninjured, but unable to move due to the severe weather,” authorities said, adding the weather prevented them from launching an extraction effort until Friday morning. Rescue coordinators confirmed the crew had “successfully located the climbers and carried out a 100-foot-long line extraction from the mountainside.” The pair are understood to have sheltered using a bivvy and sleeping bags that grew increasingly waterlogged as the rain drew on, and “would not have survived another night on the mountain.”