Camponogara ’13 rescued on hike in New Zealand

According to New Zealand media outlets, Camponogara, who is spending the semester abroad at Auckland University, set out Saturday morning with four other students to hike Mount Tongariro. He reached the Emerald Lakes, reversed course to Mount Ngauruhoe and set up camp on the southeastern side of the mountain. But by Saturday midafternoon, as the students descended the southeastern face, they found the mountain terrain much more difficult than anticipated.

“Once we started slipping on the ice we’d come too far to climb back up,” Camponogara said to 3News, a media outlet in New Zealand. Camponogara, an economics major from Ridgefield, N.J., could not immediately be reached for comment by The Daily Princetonian.

At around 5 p.m., the police received a call that the hikers were stuck in the icy patch. The helicopter had trouble finding the group in the dark, but one of the students in his group had a torch that caught the attention of the rescuers in the night.

“We were very relieved when the chopper arrived,” Camponogara said to 3News. “You can’t breathe easy till they’ve seen you.”

The helicopter found the five students huddled together on the side of the mountain. Two different helicopters transported them off the mountain.

A spokesperson for the rescue helicopter told Stuff.co.nz, a New Zealand news website, that it was likely Camponogara and the other students would have died had they not been found by the rescuers.

Over the weekend, the American students had dinner with the rescue officers who had located them on the mountain.

Many people posted on Camponogara’s Facebook account over the weekend, expressing concern about the student’s safety.

The successful rescue mission came on the same day that three Boston University students were killed when their minivan flipped over near Turangi, New Zealand. Five other students were injured in that accident.