TRAGEDY ON MOUNT EGMONT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4487, 5 August 1930, Page 3

TRAGEDY ON MOUNT EGMONT.

RESCUER’S LIFE LOST. SEQUEL TO ACCIDENT. New Plymouth, Last Night. Injury to a young man on the slopes of Mould Egmont resulted in the death last night from exposure of Lance. Gibson, a printer of Strafford, one of the rescue party.

•Waller Hull, a teacher at the Stratford" District High School, was returning with a friend from 'Humphreys Castle, near the North Egmont hosiery on Sunday afternoon to the Stratford mountain house and while glissading down the ice slope somersaulted and was transfixed through the chest with the point of his ice axe. Messrs A. Haldane (in charge at Stratford house), Gibson and \V. Hoggill sot out-with a stretcher to rescue him, but while endeavouring to obtain further assistance from the Nor-th Egmont house they were lost. They had lo spend the night in the snow at an altitude of 4500 feet and early this morning Gibson, who was scantily clad, died from exposure.

Many relief parties were dispatched and great difficulty was ;experijeuced in retrieving' the body which was brought to North Egmont at 5.15 this evening. The rescue party sent out last night from North Egmont reached Hall and a party of ten others just in time as they were all nearly asleep in the snow and would all have perished in a few hours’ time. They were discovered shortly after midnight and the whole party reached North Egmont at five o’clock this morning in an exhausted condition after a perilous journey across precipitous ice slopes. Hall is expected to recover.