Camponogara ’13 recounts danger, rescue in New Zealand

When Ivan Camponogara ’13 realized that he and his friends were approaching an icy cliff on Mount Tongariro in New Zealand, he said he decided to call rescuers as a “precaution.” Within a short time, Camponogara found himself in a helicopter on his way to safety.

On May 12, Camponogara, an avid hiker who is currently studying abroad at Auckland University in New Zealand, decided to hike Mount Ngauruhoe, an active volcano that makes up the second cone of Mount Tongariro. Camponogara was in a group with four other American students that he had met in the country. But after encountering unfriendly terrain, Camponogara — an economics major from Ridgefield, N.J. — and the other students were rescued by helicopter and transported to safer ground.

The rescue happened only hours after three Boston University students also studying abroad in the country were killed near Turangi, New Zealand, when their minivan flipped over. The accident injured five others.

In an interview from New Zealand, Camponogara described his hike as “very aggressive,” combining two common hiking routes. The group hiked Tongariro Crossing before doubling back to climb Mount Ngauruhoe and “summit,” or finally reach the mountain’s peak. Between their start time of 6:30 a.m. and their rescue sometime after 5 p.m., the group spent nearly 11 hours on the mountain, most of it in subfreezing temperatures and wind.

The group did not expect such hardships when they set out, according to Camponogara. The weather conditions were “perfect” — it seemed like a great day for a hike, he explained. The group’s mistake, however, was when they descended along the southeastern side of the mountain, he said. Because they knew the south side generally has more ice than the northern side of the mountain, which the group had already scaled earlier in the day, the five students had prepared for the ice. But instead of descending on the more manageable southwest portion of the mountains, the group somehow ended up on its southeastern face, which had many more slopes and cliff faces than the group had expected.

The problem with trying to descend among so many slopes and cliff faces, Camponogara said, is that hikers are often forced to slide down portions of the mountain, which is made up of tephra, a type of loose volcanic rock and sediment. This makes it almost impossible to climb down, and climbers have to “slide and skid your way down the mountain,” according to Camponogara. He said though this is a common practice, the group realized that they were being funneled into a cliff by two ridges.

“We were approaching the cliff; the beginning of the cliff was maybe 15 meters below where we were,” he said. “When we saw the danger of the situation, we immediately knew that the smart call would be to call for help.”

The group called the police around 5 p.m. local time. At first, the helicopter was unable to find the American students in the dark, but one of the students flagged it down with a flashlight. The helicopter first took two students and came back for Camponogara and the remaining two hikers, who had stayed behind.

Although a spokesperson for the rescue helicopter told a New Zealand news website that the students would have probably died if they had not been found by the helicopter, Camponogara said this was not the case.

“I would definitely say [the call] was a precaution, once we were off the ice sheet,” he said. “We were pretty scared and decided that it was the safest bet either way.”

Camponogara, however, did not downplay the danger of the situation.

“If we slipped, we might have ended up going over the cliff, which would have been bad,” he said. However, everyone in the group was fortunately able to reach a higher, safer ridge before the rescue helicopter reached them, he said.

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“I knew we were absolutely safe and fine because we had plenty of warm clothes, food, shelter in order to stay the night if necessary," he said. "However, the rescue was great because spending a night in those conditions would not have been very pleasant.”

Camponogara spent the subsequent day bonding with the local policemen and raising awareness and funds for the rescue helicopter that saved him.