Epic trek for survival

SUPPLIED

MOUNTAIN MAN: Matthew Briggs photographed recently in the area where he was tramping.

Relevant offers

A badly injured tramper lay in the Southern Alps for more than a week before taking two days to haul himself down a glacier in a desperate bid for survival.

With only Little Dog, his border collie-huntaway cross, for company, extreme alpine tramper Matthew Briggs, 34, spent 12 days in the country's most unforgiving terrain with severe injuries and dwindling rations after falling down a five-metre bluff on March 20.

The Briton was rescued by helicopter yesterday, and despite bone-deep cuts to his back and buttocks, a suspected broken ankle and wrist, the hardy tramper refused pain relief and offered his rescuers a cup of tea.

Searchers found Mr Briggs only after he dragged himself to a hut. Two hunters then tramped for 13 hours on Monday to raise the alarm.

After being picked up at first light, Mr Briggs was flown to Grey Hospital in Greymouth where he had surgery.

Despite his tale of endurance, Mr Briggs was criticised for wasting police time and risking his life by not leaving crucial details about his trip.

Mr Briggs left Middlemarch about March 16, parking his van near the Huxley River in South Canterbury. He tramped north through mountains to the Karangarua saddle in south Westland. But he fell near the Douglas Glacier, he told Stu Drake, a paramedic on the Solid Energy rescue helicopter. He then faced an "epic [vertical] descent" of about a kilometre in "absolute tiger country" to reach the shelter of Horace Walker Hut.

Though the hut was only a few kilometres away, Mr Briggs made camp and waited for more than a week for friends to raise the alarm.

"Two days into the panic button time, nothing had happened. So he thought, 'If I don't get myself out of here, I'm going to die here."'

He spent the next two days hobbling down the steep slope to the hut, where he found the hunters and much-needed food before his rescue, Mr Drake said.

Barry Sharplin, 21, one of the two hunters, said Mr Briggs arrived looking "a bit worse for wear".

Despite his ordeal, Briggs was lucid and able to describe what happened. "He was better than I would have been in that situation. He handled himself pretty well," said Sharplin.

"He landed on some rocks. He said he cut his leg pretty bad and there was just a crimson river below him ...

"He said it had taken him two days to walk 3km. He had two gashes in his leg, about six inches long by around two inches deep."

Mr Sharplin said Mr Briggs told them he had hobbled, crawled and slid his way to the hut, rationing the rice and other food he had, and stopping at night to bathe his wounds in a mixture of salt and water.

"He was really having to ration his food, I think he only had about one day left to go," Mr Sharplin said.

When paramedics assessed him, they found injuries that would have seen other people "lying on the ground".

"He refused pain relief. We carry morphine, but he was just happy to get out of there. He was an extremely capable and tough sort of character," Mr Drake said.

Briggs had been helicoptered to Grey Base Hospital where he underwent surgery yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday, Sharplin took Little Dog, a border collie-huntaway cross, to Wanaka SPCA where friends were going to collect him to take back to Middlemarch.

"He ate a can of spaghetti within about five seconds, it was one hungry animal," Sharplin said.

Originally from Britain, Briggs has lived in Middlemarch for about two years and owns its general store. Store manager and friend Dennis Bowers said Briggs had left to do a series of tramps around the South Island two weeks ago.

Search and rescue head Sean Judd said Mr Briggs was clearly skilled to survive, but had wasted hours of police time as they scrambled first to find his van and then him. "The basic thing people tend to overlook is leaving clear intentions about where they're going ... the route they're going to take and the time they're going to come out."

- © Fairfax NZ News