Guide's decision cost him his life

A Wanaka mountain guide's decision not to secure himself using a belay spike while climbing the summit rocks of Aoraki-Mt Cook cost him his life.

Issuing his findings, coroner Richard McElrea found Anton Francis Wopereis, 54, died when he accidentally fell near the summit of Mt Cook on New Year's Day 2008.

Mr Wopereis, an experienced and well-respected mountain guide who had made 30 ascents of Mt Cook, was one of five guides, each with a client, climbing the Linda Glacier route that day.

Mr Wopereis and his client were the last of the five duos climbing the summit rocks. The four guides who preceded him had each belayed their client as they climbed the rock and ice face in the mid section of the summit rocks.

At a hearing last November, other guides gave evidence of the fall occurring about 9.30am on New Year's Day. The combined effect of the eight other climbers on the slope would have weakened the surface snow. Cracks in the ice were noticed about 30cm back from the edge.

Mr Wopereis's client told the coroner how the snow was melting around the edges and ice axes went right in. When Mr Wopereis pulled on them they came out of the snow and he fell. She heard him say: "I can't stop".

He fell about 60 metres before being restrained by his climbing rope which was attached to a fixed point. His head and body hit the cliff face, leaving Mr Wopereis unconscious. He died soon after.

One guide told the coroner he belayed through the summit rocks on a case-by-case basis, belaying some sections of the route on about half of his climbs. Another used a "a personal rule of thumb of having to belay on technical terrain".

Mr Wopereis was known to invariably climb through the summit rocks without a belay, and his "actions do tend to suggest a high tolerance to risk", guide David Crow told the coroner.

He said what appeared to have let Mr Wopereis down "was his application of experience as a routine, this leaving little room to check expectations against reality".

The Labour Department held its own investigation into the incident and identified a need for mountain guiding health and safety systems to "provide for a robust formal peer and/or auditor observation and assessment of highly qualified mountain guides' climbing and guiding skills while they are working".

Mr McElrea found that not belaying cost Mr Wopereis his life, and it could well have placed his client in peril if there had not been other guiding support immediately available.

No fault lay with his client or any of the other four guides and their clients.

The coroner supported the New Zealand Mountain Guides Association efforts to achieve uniformity of best practice among all mountain guides operating in New Zealand.

He recommended the association hold an annual skills and knowledge meeting to include discussion and analysis of any incidents or accidents and to inform members of those findings.

Another recommendation to the association was to ensure whenever practicably possible, for a client to have an independent means of calling for help in the event the guide was incapacitated.

- © Fairfax NZ News