Czech tramper 'lucky to live'

Photo / APN

A tramper from the Czech Republic who broke both legs after a sheer 30m fall on to jagged rocks in the Buckler Burn near Glenorchy on Lake Wakatipu, near Queenstown, is considered lucky to be alive.

Search and rescue co-ordinator Senior Constable Julian Cahill, of Queenstown, said: "He fell on rocks but we think he may have landed on his pack."

People usually died from such falls.

Kladno Holuska, 29, understood to be from a village near Prague, had been tramping up a Buckler Burn track with a male companion, also from the Czech Republic, about 1pm on Saturday.

Mr Holuska somehow got off the track and went into a 30m freefall off the cliff on to the riverbed of the Buckler Burn, Mr Cahill said.

His companion could not climb down the cliff but could see Mr Holuska was still moving and ran 4km to Wyuna Station to raise the alarm.

First response paramedic Callan Grimmer said: "I just shimmied down the bluff, it was a wee bit hairy."

Mr Holuska was still conscious after one and a half hours but "he had a lot of blood loss, he was pretty banged up, in a lot of pain and in shock".

He was brought up on a stretcher by a long strop to the Glacier Southern Lakes Helicopter then taken to Southland Hospital.

Mr Holuska broke his left thigh and wrist in the fall, suffered moderate bleeding and bruising to the head and face and sustained double compound fractures in his lower right leg.

A Southland Hospital spokesperson said yesterday that Mr Holuska was in a stable condition after surgery yesterday morning.

- OTAGO DAILY TIMES