KEY POINTS:
Hamish Stace feels as if he has dodged a bullet after sliding 30m down a South Island mountain and "bouncing like a rag doll" on jagged rocks.
The Blenheim climber, 20, stunned his fellow climbers by getting straight up after the fall when they feared he had been killed.
"It sort of only hit me in the final moments of the slide down...that I was going to impact the rocks so hard," Mr Stace said.
"As soon as I had stopped bouncing across the top of these rocks and I stood up, I just thought 'how the hell have I not got heaps of broken bones or masses of gashes or anything' because they are quite sharp rocks."
Mr Stace suffered severe bruising and cuts after his plunge down 2885m Mt Tapuae-o-Uenuku , about 60km south of Blenheim.
"Because I had my feet out in front of me I didn't go onto [the rocks] side on and that probably could have reduced [the impact] a bit."
If he had come down head-first, he said, "I shudder to think how bad it could have been".
Mr Stace set out with three friends on Monday and reached the summit on Tuesday. On the way back, a few hundred metres from the summit, he fell while attempting a "controlled descent" on a steep snow face, using his ice axe to dictate his speed.
"But it just got out of control, and I had no way of slowing myself down. It was too hard to get stuck in - it was too icy."
"I just slid out of control until I hit the rocks at the bottom. I just sort of bounced on the rocks for a bit and came to a stop and amazingly I could just walk around and [was] seemingly pretty fine." After the adrenalin wore off, he realised "that I was pretty hurt".
"But it was nowhere near as serious as it could have been really. I was just real lucky."
The Westpac Rescue Helicopter picked Mr Stace up. "His friends said he hit the rocks at great speed and were afraid he might be dead so were amazed to find him conscious, able to walk and with only relatively minor injuries," said crewman Dave Greenberg.
Mr Stace wants to tackle the mountain again, but will use better judgment next time.
