WELLINGTON, New Zealand — One person guiding on a mountain and the person they were leading died after a fall from Aoraki Mount Cook, with two other members of their climbing party rescued unharmed in an overnight effort on Tuesday atop New Zealand’s highest peak. The pair fell from a summit ridge while attempting the mountain in the Southern Alps, prompting an emergency operation that found their bodies around daybreak on Nov. 25, 2025.
Four climbers on the west side of Aoraki/Mount Cook required assistance, and police were notified about 11.20pm on Monday, New Zealand Police said in a statement. A helicopter from Queenstown took a Department of Conservation search and rescue officer to Wānaka, while the second aircraft was sent from Dunedin; the latter found two of the members of the party at 2:15am and removed them from the mountain, leaving teams to search overnight for two missing members who were later found dead.
According to public broadcaster RNZ, the group included two New Zealand mountain guides and two overseas tourists who were in pairs, tied together while climbing from Empress Hut toward the summit, when the pair that fell came off the west ridge. The New Zealand Mountain Guides Association said the guide who died was an internationally respected professional, and that both were members of a close-knit guiding community, as police trawl through the coronial process and next-of-kin notifications.
One climber appeared to have slipped off the ridge on the western side of the mountain, dragging their roped partner in a fall that might have taken them about 1,500 feet down the face, said search and rescue pilot Nigel Gee in an interview with local broadcaster 1News. While the weather was calm and clear, and conditions in the snow and on the glacier were described by safety officials as solid for climbing, steep terrain exposed to falling rock left the rope team little room for error, as rescuers later worked in what police called a challenging alpine environment.
Climbing risks and history on Aoraki Mount Cook
Aoraki Mount Cook is 3,724 meters high in the Southern Alps of New Zealand’s South Island and anchors a national park that attracts thousands of climbers and hikers each year, according to popular reference material. The mountain, officially known as Aoraki/Mount Cook, is famous for deeply crevassed glaciers, avalanche-gutted slopes, and unpredictable weather that make its classic routes serious undertakings even in settled conditions.
Recent international news reports that draw on local statistics have reported that more than 240 people have died on the mountain and in its surrounding national park since the early 20th century, and dozens of bodies have never been found. That death toll includes three climbers — the American guides Kurt Blair, 56, and Carlos Romero, 50, and a Canadian companion — who vanished on the mountain in December 2024 after flying to Plateau Hut to climb via the Zurbriggen Ridge; gear thought to belong them was later discovered high on the peak, as previously reported by The Associated Press and The Guardian.
The confirmed fatal falling from Aoraki Mount Cook this week comes during a busy period of fine weather that has seen many guided and independent parties on the mountain, safety officials say. The high peaks are what the Mountain Safety Council calls a “high-consequence environment,” where one mistake can be fatal, and Mike Daisley, its chief executive, said that even highly skilled guides couldn’t eliminate all risk in mountaineering. Police say the two climbers who survived are receiving support, while investigators, a coroner, and the guiding community are gathering information about what went wrong on New Zealand’s highest mountain.
