What began as a rewarding day hiking on Mount Pirongia quickly turned into a painful and frightening ordeal for Maree.
She and her sister had successfully reached the Trig on Ruapane and were making their way back down the steep mountain track when Maree lost her footing.
“We started to descend the steep, rocky track,” Maree says. “I slipped and tumbled about five or six metres.”
She landed hard on the rocky terrain below.
Stranded on the mountainside
Maree was badly injured, bruised, and in severe pain. She couldn’t stand, let alone walk down the rugged track. The terrain was too steep and uneven for a stretcher carry, and walking out was simply not an option.
Realising they needed urgent help, someone called 111.
Not long after, Maree heard the sound of helicopter blades approaching overhead.
The Greenlea Rescue Helicopter had been dispatched. *Your Greenlea Rescue Helicopter was operating with a cover helicopter, call sign HEP (yellow rescue helicopter), while your H145 helicopter, call sign IXD (black and green rescue helicopter) underwent scheduled maintenance
“I’m just so lucky,” Maree says. “So lucky.”
Because of the steep terrain and dense bush, the helicopter crew could not land nearby. Instead, a Critical Care Flight Paramedic was winched down to Maree’s side to assess her injuries and prepare her for extraction.
Once she was safely secured in the rescue harness, Maree was carefully winched up into the helicopter.
“Once we were all hooked up and going, I couldn’t look down,” she recalls. “All I could see was the helicopter going up.”
From there, the crew flew Maree directly to Waikato Hospital for further assessment and treatment.
At hospital, Maree learned she had fractured her wrist and suffered extensive bruising from the fall. While her injuries were serious, she was relieved the outcome wasn’t worse.
“I’m so grateful,” she says. “I thought it was going to be far worse, based on how I felt up there on the mountain.”
Looking back, Maree knows the rescue helicopter made all the difference.
She now fondly refers to the aircraft and crew as her “Knight in Yellow Shining Armour” - a tribute to the yellow rescue helicopter that safely brought her off the mountain and into care.
Rescues like Maree’s highlight the vital role of helicopter emergency services in reaching injured people in remote, rugged locations where ground access is difficult or impossible.
Because you never know when you'll need your rescue helicopter. Donate today > https://give.rescue.org.nz/event/greenlea-rescue-helicopter/donate