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Police have named a climbing guide who was killed in a fall on Aoraki / Mt Cook yesterday - a mountain he had climbed almost 30 times.
The 54-year old had more than 35 years' climbing experience.
He was Anton Wopereis, who an adventure website profiling guides said first climbed Mt Cook in 1976 and had "clocked up nearly 30 more successful climbs of the peak".
Mr Wopereis was a member of the International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations and had climbed, skied or guided in Australia, the Himalayas (on Mt Everest), Canada, Alaska, Peru, Ecuador, Antarctica and Europe.
He worked as a survey technician based in Wanaka when not out climbing, and was a keen mountainbiker.
Mr Wopereis, who worked for Aspiring Guides, was 3400m up Summit Rocks when he fell just before 9.30am yesterday. He died two hours later from head injuries.
Senior Constable Brent Swanson, of Twizel police, said the man was roped to a female Scottish client who survived unscathed.
"She didn't fall as their anchor in the rock held," he said.
He said the accident appeared to have been caused by a chunk of ice that had come loose.
Police described him as a well-respected and experienced guide.
New Zealand Mountain Guides Association executive officer Dave Crow said the guide had done a good job of securing his client ahead of the accident.
"To his credit, the client survived well," said Mr Crow.
Four other guides that were climbing nearby arranged for their clients to be evacuated and came to the man's aid, he said.
"The other guides did a remarkable job of getting everybody in a position where they could get off the mountain. It's a major amount of logistics for the guides to get down to the guide that fell as well as securing their own clients."
He said the guiding community was small, with only about 40 active high-mountain guides in the association's 130-strong membership, and the rescuers were "pretty cut up" over the death of one of their own.
He said the man who died was a well-known guide with a "very solid" reputation.
Mr Crow said it was too early to know what went wrong but the association had launched its own investigation in addition to police inquiries.
"It was good conditions early on [in the] morning - there was a good dew on the ground down in the McKenzie basin - but as soon as the day warms up the snow can soften," he said.
"There had been a few parties through that particular route before this guide, so the snow just may have not been as secure as what he had anticipated."
It was unusual for a guided party to have an accident on the mountain but with the rising popularity the odds increased, he said. "Generally in the high mountains, in the Aoraki/Mount Cook area, it's not unusual for climbing accidents to occur around this time of year. It's the busiest time of year, there are a lot of people up there."
A guide who was nearby when the accident happened said the death would hit the mountain guiding community hard.
"It was quite a harrowing experience for everybody," said the man, who did not want to be named.
"It really hasn't sunk in yet."
Adventure Consultants managing director Guy Cotter said such accidents were fairly unusual.
"There's been a spate of them in the last few years. But over the duration of the last 100 years of guiding in New Zealand, there's actually been very few. It is a high-risk industry but at the same time there's a lot of guiding going on all the time with no incidents whatsoever, so on the whole things are very safe and well managed."
Fatal accidents
The mountain has claimed 219 lives, including yesterday's death. Recent fatal accidents include:
* A 29-year-old woman who was killed by a rockslide in March.
* Two Japanese climbers who fell to their deaths last January when their abseil anchor rock shifted under their weight and dragged them off the summit.
* A Danish woman who slipped on ice and fell 300m in December 2006. She died in hospital from severe head injuries.
