EGMONT CLAIMS ANOTHER VICTIM

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7296, 5 August 1930, Page 6

EGMONT CLAIMS ANOTHER VICTIM

Rescuer Dies From Exposure INJURED MAN EXPECTED TO RECOVER PARTY OF TEN HAVE NARROW ESCAPE. Per Press Associat-ron. NEW PLYMOUTH, Last Night. Injury to a young man on the slopes of Mount Egmont resulted in the death last night from exposure of Lance Gibson, a printer of Stratford, cue of the rescue party. ■ Walter Hall, a teacher at the Stretford District High School, was returning with a friend from Humphreys Castle, near the North Egmont liustlery on Sunday afternoon to the Stratford mountain house and while glissading down the ico 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. Hog* gitt set out with a stretcher to rescuo him, but while endeavouring to obtain further assistance from the North Egmont house they were lost. ' They had to spend the night in the snow at an altitude of 4500 feet aud early this morning Gibson, who was scantily clad, died from exposure. Many relief parties were dispatched < and great difficulty was experienced in - retrieving tho body which was brought to North Egmont at 5.15 this covniug. 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 live o’clock this morning in an exhausted condition after a perilous journey across precipitous ice slopes. 1 Hull is expected to recover.