Search By Torchlight For Woman Skier On Ruapehu

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28963, 3 August 1959, Page 13

Search By Torchlight For Woman Skier On Ruapehu

Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, August 2. Mountain parties equipped with crampons, ice-axes and climbing rope searched on Saturday night by torchlight to find Miss Bobby Taminga. aged 30. of Wadcstown Wellington. who had earlier fallen and slid 150 feet, down the side of notorious Skippers canyon on Mount Ruapehu. After following her footsteps through difficult snow, a party found her trapped on a rock outcrop near the top of a steep and dangerous icy scree slope above Happy Valley. She was uninjured. A man who had attempted to go to her assistance by himself suffered grazes and shock when he also slid about 200 feet. He was taken to the Taumarunui Hospital. Miss Taminga. formerly of Rotterdam, lost one of her skis over Skippers when near the foot of the Staircase. Leaving a companion, Mr J. L. de Bruyne. also of Wellington, she decided to try to retrieve it by climbing down a steep couloir under Pinnacle Ridge. She had not gone far when she slipped and slid down to the bottom. Fortunately she was on snow all the way. After a few seconds, she picked herself up and called out for

Mr de Bruyne to take the ski she had left at the top to the Wellington Tramping Club hut where they were staying. She would walk down the canyon and come out lower down, she said. Mr de Bruyne. also formerly of Holland, seeing that she was apparently uninjured. complied This was about 4.30 p.m. at which time the chairlifts were stopped for the day and people began to leave the slopes.

Mr de Bruyne le f t the ski at the hut and returned to the top of Skippers with an ice-axe. He could see no sign of Miss Taminga. The last light had gone when he raised the alarm at the Ruapehu Ski Club lodge shortly before 7 p.m.

In the canyon, a search party followed tracks along a slope which had become difficult even for persons wearing crampons. The tracks showed where Miss Taminga had tried to climb a snow face and had again slipped back a long way. Further down the valley, by dint of kicking, she had managed to find toeholds up another steep face on to the top of a ridge overlooking Happy Valley. From there she started to climb down the other side, but lost her footing and fell on to a rock outcrop. Terrified, she clung there, unable to move down or back, until she was found by searchers at 10 p.m.