FALL DOWN CLIFF.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 113, 16 May 1933, Page 9

FALL DOWN CLIFF.

MAN'S REMARKABLE ESCAPE. RESCUERS' DIFFICULT TASK. While- mustering on the high country on tho Leatham run, Mr. Alexander A. Ward, son of Mr. G. J. Ward, of Blenheim, met with a sensational accident, falling headlong over a precipitous cliff and being saved from death in the rocky creek lied a thousand feet below only by the fact that his downward progress wae arrested by a tough shrub. Ho U now an inmate of the Stafford Hospital. Mr. Ward, with a party, had been mustering above the snow line in the Nteep and precipitous buck country of the run, states an exchange, and found himself ahead of his section when he reached the lip of an aby«?« some 1200 ft in depth, at the bottom of which Hows Boulder Creek.

Wliile waiting for the others he placed liis staff against a rock near the edge of the elifT and leaned against it. Either the rock gave way or the tstaff slipped, and the , limn was precipitated headlong. He fell it sheer 00ft in ono drop and was then caught in a shingle slide which carried him, unconscious, a further GOft or 70ft, hut fortunately he brou.Slit up against a, stout tawhiue bush, which arrested his progress on the extreme edge of a further sheer drop of 120 ft, followed by a etccp descent of ]OOft to the creek bed.

Tho descent by rescuer* to the creek bed, lowering an improvised stretcher from ono man to another, occupied two and a half hours, after which the stretcher-bearers, Messrs. John Jackson, Joseph Reynolds, an<l W. Lane, wore faced with a seven-mile trek down the rocky gorge, often up to their middles in the icy snow water. They had to crofß and rcerose the creek over 30 times, and jt was carrying a fair volume of water. Tn addition, many steep spurs had to he negotiated.