'I bloody well nearly killed him, didn't I?'

By ELEANOR BLACK and STACEY BODGER

John Painting can hardly believe what almost happened to him and his son on a "bloke-bonding" tramping trip.

A tearful Mr Painting sat in the sun in Turangi yesterday, recalling with shock how close he and 13-year-old Matt came to losing their lives.

"I feel really very rotten having gotten him into that. I bloody well nearly killed him, didn't I?"

Mr Painting's frostbitten fingers and windburned eyelids are the result of two days and nights spent in a blizzard in the Kaimanawa Ranges.

Every few minutes he stretches his fingers. They feel like they are wrapped in leather and when he rubs them together they are numb.

But his son's feet are in much worse shape, cold to the touch - "like little ice blocks," says his mother Karen - and slowly defrosting in thick socks.

Mr Painting, aged 42, and Matt headed into the ranges on a four-day tramping and hunting trip on Monday, despite police warning them of an on-coming blizzard with sub-zero temperatures.

Now Mr Painting says he wants other people to pay heed - alpine territory demands respect and extreme caution.

It was only due to the extraordinary efforts of 52-year-old Rotorua man Brian Pickering, a highly experienced tramper and mountaineering club member, that the pair were flown out of the bush yesterday morning in surprisingly high spirits and good health.

Mr Pickering stumbled across the pair suffering from hypothermia. He kept them warm, fed them and called for help on his cellphone.

A search-and-rescue ground team reached the trio on Tuesday.

Mr Pickering, a nursing consultant at Rotorua Hospital, refuses to allow people to call him a hero. "I was the right person at the right time."

But Senior Constable Cliff Jones, of Turangi, plans to nominate him for the country's highest bravery award, the New Zealand Cross.

Until last year, the George Cross was the top civilian award, but it was replaced with the NZ Cross when the country separated from the British honours system last September.

There have been two recipients of the NZ Cross. Last year, Jacinda Amey received the honour for rescuing Mike Fraser, a MetService colleague, after a shark attack at sub-Antarctic Campbell Island in 1992.

Reginald Dixon received the award posthumously last year for helping passengers trapped in the wreckage of the Ansett Dash 8 that crashed in 1995 near Palmerston North.