KEY POINTS:
Climber Mark Inglis, who lost his legs below the knee to frostbite after being stranded on Aoraki Mt Cook 26 years ago, says the line between surviving and dying on New Zealand's highest peak is narrow.
A Japanese climber died on the mountain overnight after being stranded for seven days. Another climber was rescued.
Inglis today said the lives of any climber trapped on the peak are always on an "absolute knife edge".
Inglis and his climbing partner Phil Doole were trapped on Aoraki Mt Cook in a snow cave for two weeks. As a result, Mr Inglis had both his legs amputated below the knee.
"It's fantastic that the guy got out alive but such a tragedy that the other guy died and they had such good gear," Mr Inglis said today.
He said the pair may have been able to burrow into the snow with their tent but the ability to think in freezing winds of up to 130km/h is compromised.
"It's the winds that kill you up there," Mr Inglis said. "It's a bit like having a huge stereo blasting in your face and then trying to do a maths problem."
Mr Inglis said if you can get out of the wind, many more opportunities present themselves.
He said if reports of the climbers being outside their tent last night are correct, then the fact that one of the climbers survived is lucky.
The man who died today - guide Kiyoshi Ikenouchi, aged 49 - had still been speaking as recently as 1am but died soon after, police said.
Mr Ikenouchi and his client Hideaki Nara, 51, both from Tokyo, had been trapped on the mountain since last weekend.
The temperature in the area where the men were stranded was estimated to between - 20C and - 25C.
Mr Inglis said while he was trapped on the mountain, he worried that a rescuer would die trying to get to him.
"The fact that someone was looking for them must have been a huge boon to them without the radio contact. It's the not knowing that is the really tough thing.
"Certainly, in our case we felt this huge responsibility to survive. Knowing that everyone is trying so hard at the bottom, then you have to try equally as hard as well.
"Your mind is going constantly. You're constantly thinking about how to survive. Am I doing the right thing to survive? Am I doing the right thing in this second, in this hour?"
Mr Inglis also paid tribute to the rescuers.
"The pressure that those guys have to operate under is phenomenal. It was only half a good result in a lot of ways but it was also awesome that no one got hurt getting to them," Mr Inglis said.
