Helicopter rescues injured girl from banned, isolated icy face of Mt Hutt

Press, 14 August 1978, Page 1

Helicopter rescues injured girl from banned, isolated icy face of Mt Hutt

A badly injured woman skier was lifted out of a prohibited area on Mount Hutt yesterday after falling several hundred metres down an icy slope.

She is Miss Julie Standish, a schoolteacher, of 70 Purchas Street, Christchurch, but originally from Gore, where her parents still live. The accident occurred about 3.45 p.m. Miss Standish was lifted out of the area by a helicopter and flown to Ashburton Hospital. She suffered head injuries and a fractured pelvis, and was in a serious condition last evening. Shortly before the accident, Miss Standish and two other skiers had been seen ski-ing along a ridge on the Rakaia Gorge side of Mount Hutt. This area was outside the Mount Hutt ski-field boundary, and skiers had been warned not to ski there because of icy conditions, said the chairman of directors of the Mount Hutt Ski and Alpine Tourist Company (Mr P. Yeoman) last evening. When Miss Standish slipped and feil down the slope, the alarm was raised by one of the skiers with her.

Two people, one of them a ski-patroller, climbed down to Miss Standish and did what they could for her until the helicopter arrived minutes later.

The rescue helicopter, from Whirl-Wide Helicopters, Ltd, was already on the mountain ferrying skiers, and was called on by the ski-field controllers.

The helicopter, flown by Mr R. Brown, of Oamaru, went to an area east of the main ski-field. A spokesman for Whirl-Wide Helicopters, Mr I. Buick, said that the snow in the area where Miss Standish had fallen was frozen, and that he and several helpers had to kick out a "platform” before loading her aboard the helicopter.

Miss Standish was strapped into a seat. She was unconscious and bleeding badly. She was accompanied to Ashburton by a ski patrolman, who administered first aid. Mr Buick said that if the slope had been much steeper, the rescue would have been impossible without a winch.

The helicopter landed at the Ashburton Domain, near the hospital, about 4.40 p.m. Miss Standish, and the other skiers were in a prohibited area, said Mr Yeoman, of the Mount Hutt company, last evening. “We will tighten up security on the skifield to try to prevent skiers going into prohibited areas,” he said.

“We will probably expel people from the mountain if they ski out of the field boundary and, ir doing so, endanger themselves and other people,” he said.

All facilities on the field were working yesterday, but ski-ing was restricted to the main runs because of icy patches. All skiers were told about this on the daily ski report, and on boards posted at the toll gate and on the skifield, said Mr Yeoman. The police have now released the names of the Australian who was killed, and the woman who was injured, after the car they were in was blown off the Mount Hutt access road

on Thursday. The man was

Phillip Leigh Pearson, of Queanbeyan, New South Wales. His age is not known.

The injured woman is Sheryl Ann Robbins, aged 21, of Punchbowl Road, Sydney. She has a broken leg.

A third person in the car, Brian Anthony Lynch, an Australian ski instructor working at Mount Hutt, suffered bruising, exposure and shock. Two other vehicles were blown from the road by the freak winds on Thursday. The first, a camper van containing five people, was spun around by the wind and the roof was torn off.

Another camper van, with three people aboard, went 100 m down a snowfilled gully when it came to rest. Nobody in either van was injured.

Camper vans would be banned from the access road and the Mount Hutt Company would also look at the possibility of building protective barriers, said Mr Yeoman.