Wellington -
A Swedish extreme skier fell to his death on New Zealand's highest mountain, the 3 754 metre Aoraki/Mount Cook, bringing to seven the number of people who died in the country's mountains in the last three months, according to a newspaper report on Monday.
The New Zealand Herald reported that the man, who died after falling 600 metres down a vertical slope on Sunday morning, and his climbing partner were extreme altitude skiers who had become the first to complete a continuous skiing descent of the mountain's east face earlier in the week.
Senior constable Brent Swanson of the Lake Tekapo Police said the men had been traversing at 3 700m toward the lower summit of Mount Cook at the time of the accident.
“One minute his partner was skiing behind him and next minute he's looked back and he's gone,” Swanson was quoted as saying.
The dead man was identified as Magnus Kastengren, 32, of Sweden. His mountaineering partner, Andreas Fransson, who was uninjured, was air lifted off the mountain on Sunday.
The Department of Conservation's regional alpine rescue team leader Jim Spencer told the New Zealand Herald there was no room for error when skiing on the mountain.
“If you were to slip, you would very quickly pick up a speed that you couldn't control,” he said. -
Sapa-dpa