Fallen tramper loved the mountain tops

Search and rescue volunteers hoped today to retrieve the body of Nelson father of two Stephen Alderson, who was found dead at the foot of a high bluff in a remote rugged area of Kahurangi National Park yesterday.

Mr Alderson, 44, an experienced tramper, had been undertaking a solo, ambitious traverse of Mt Snowdon and Devil River Peak, when he fell to his death down an 80m slope on the north-west side of Devil River Peak.

The alarm was raised by his wife, Denise, after he failed to return from the two-day trip on Monday.

Fifty search and rescue volunteers were taken by helicopter into the area yesterday and Mr Alderson's body was found at 3pm.

Sergeant Mike Fitzsimmons, of Nelson Search and Rescue, said he believed Mr Alderson would have died instantly from the fall.

His body was to be recovered today by SAR volunteers who were to be taken to the area by Royal New Zealand Air Force Iroquois helicopter. Strong winds prevented the recovery of his body yesterday.

Mr Fitzsimmons said Mr Alderson's death had been reported to the coroner who would decide whether an inquest was to be held.

Mrs Alderson told the Nelson Mail today that her husband, an arborist for Nelmac, was an "extremely keen" tramper and mountainbiker, who had walked in the same area three times before.

She spoke to him by mobile phone on Sunday. "I think I talked to him shortly before he died. I knew he was very high up on the tops.

"He always loved the tops of mountains rather than the valleys, but mountains can be very cruel."

Mrs Alderson said her husband had been on many solo trips but she had never worried because he was always so careful.

"He was so strong, he could walk like anything and carry big loads.

"He's walked from one end of New Zealand to the other and back and he's cycled from one end of New Zealand and back."

He'd also undertaken a solo traverse of Fiordland in the 1990s.

Mrs Alderson said she and their two daughters, aged 12 and nine, had also been on less ambitious tramps together as a family.

She recalled how when she'd tramped up Mt Owen with a friend, Mr Alderson had decided to take his daughters up the mountain when the youngest was just five-years-old.

Mr Alderson always signed his name in mountain hut books as "Stephen A Footslogger", she said.

"Many keen trampers would have seen his name in the hut books," she said.

He was also a keen advocate of saving the remote backcountry huts and had told people that after being injured in a fall in Fiordland while on a solo tramp, that a small, remote backcountry hut had saved his life.

- © Fairfax NZ News