WA climber tells of brother's death fall

An Australian climber who watched his brother fall to his death on New Zealand's
highest mountain thought he would also perish on the treacherous peak.
Miles Vinar, 42, will be reunited with his family in Perth on Monday, but his
brother's body is unlikely to be recovered.
He said his brush with death came when he was stranded on Mt Cook after he and his
doctor brother, Mark Vinar, got into trouble trying to descend from a ridge high on
the mountain on Thursday morning.
The men were flown to Plateau Hut, in the Mt Cook National Park, last Saturday with
plans to climb the mountain via the difficult Zurbriggens route early on Wednesday
morning.
Mr Vinar said as soon as he saw his brother tumble hundreds of metres down a steep
hill while trying to cross some ice he knew there was no chance he'd survive the
fall.
"I won't go into gory details, but there is just no way. As I was continuing down
the snow slope I sort of saw evidence so, there was no chance," he said.
"He would have been unconscious. He would have been as close to death as you could
possible get, I would imagine, and there was just absolutely no chance of any sort
of rescue."
The Perth man told of his fear during two icy nights spent in a snow cave on Mount
Cook.
"On Thursday night, actually, I was expecting to die that night," he said.
"It was just a continual flow of snow coming down your face ... It was a continual
battle just to keep clearing it all the time."
Miles sustained just a few light cuts around his face from his jacket, and a little
sunburn on his nose.
Once the weather cleared, he signalled a group of other climbers by flashing his
headlamp about 4.30am (0230 AEDT) on Saturday.
But he was only sure of rescue when a helicopter approached him.
"When I saw that helicopter coming up towards me, I almost wept then. I was so
happy. It is just an amazing feeling, absolutely amazing," he said.
Mr Vinar, who works as a systems engineer, said he would now give up mountain
climbing, and would never again put his wife and daughter through the ordeal of
worrying about his safety.
His wife Sally Vinar said: "He's relatively unhurt, but when he talks about what he
went through, I'm just lucky to have him coming home."
But the Vinar family was naturally distraught, she said.
Miles Vinar said Mt Cook was a fitting resting place for his generous and courageous
brother.
"I couldn't think of a better place for him, to be part of the mountains he loved so
much and he will become part of it I suppose," he said.
Chief ranger at the Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park, Richard McNamara, said it was
difficult to know whether Mark's body would ever be recovered.
"It's very much a bit of a lottery really. If later in the summer the snow melts and
he is on the surface and we can safely recover it, we will," McNamara said.
He said there was no gear the two brothers could have had with them that would have
averted disaster and they did everything right.
"They were well set up. They had a lot of good equipment and they were gradually
increasing the difficulty of their routes.
"They did the right thing and turned back when the weather was no good, but in that
country you don't get a second chance."
Nine people have died on Zurbriggens Ridge, where Mark is thought to have perished,
and 70 people have died on Aoraki/Mt Cook since 1907.
Thirty-four Australian climbers have died in the Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park,
including 18 on the mountain.