ANDEAN ’QUAKE N.Z. Climber In Huaraz?

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32313, 3 June 1970, Page 1

ANDEAN ’QUAKE N.Z. Climber In Huaraz?

The leader of a New Zealand mountaineering expedition to the Peruvian Andes, Mr J. Jolly, is thought to have been in hospital in Huaraz, one of the areas hit badly by the earthquake in Peru on Sunday, May 31.

The expedition’s equipment and medical officer, Mr J. Stanton, was probably on his way between Huaraz and the Andes when the earthquake struck; the other four members of the party would have been in the mountain area establishing a base camp for an assault on Pucahirca.

The latest information was a letter received by a Christchurch woman from Mr Stanton and posted from Huaraz on May 23. This said that Mr Jolly, aged 24, a zoology graduate, was thought to- bg suffering with acute bronchitis and had been admitted to hospital in Huaraz. As medical officer Mr Stanton had stayed with him, he wrote, while the other members of the party, Messrs J. Glasgow, P. Gough, H. Wilson and A. Buchanan, had gone ahead to the base camp area. Mr Stanton wrote that he intended to leave on May 25, but that Mr Jolly would probably be in hospital for at least another four days. In letters home on May 17 other members of the expedition said the news would probably be the last for some time, as they would be in fairly inaccessible places.

Three groups of mountain

eers, including the New Zealanders, were in the area devastated by the earthquake, the Associated Press reported from Lima. Nothing has been heard of them since the ’quake. The climbers were attempting to scale Andean peaks in the vicinity. Apart from the New Zealanders, they included eight Japanese and 14 Czechoslovaks. Avalanche Danger Peruvian mountain-climb-ing sources have expressed concern for the mountaineers. They said that the three groups probably were in danger from avalanches touched off by the ’quake.