Two Australian climbers fall to their deaths in New Zealand

The pair were on one of their regular climbing holidays in New Zealand when they fell, roped together, more than 700m down a steep face on the eastern slope of Mt Silberhorn in the Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park.

A friend of the couple would have to formally identify the bodies.

Police are investigating and believe one may have fallen and pulled the other down.

They had been camping high in the mountain, and Commander Inspector Gaskin said they had fallen a considerable distance.

The dead bodies of Melbourne mountain guide Stuart Jason Hollaway, 42 and his partner, Dale Amanda Thistlewaite, 35, were found roped together near the top of New Zealand’s seventh-highest mountain.

It is not the first time that mountain climbers from Melbourne have fallen off from the slopes in Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park.

“They were passionate people who laughed a lot and could tell the best stories”, friends from the Melbourne University Mountaineering Club said in a statement.

Four rescuers from the Aoraki/Mount Cook alpine rescue team left to recover the bodies of the climbers on Friday at 6pm and returned at 8.30pm.

Ms Thistlethwaite worked at the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office, and had worked at Parks Victoria.

Mr Gaskin said yesterday that the climbers were thought to have camped near the summit of the mountain the night before their fatal fall.

“It’s very sad. A couple of families are going to have their new year completely ruined which is just bad”, Mr Gaskin said.

The families of the pair have been informed and their deaths will be referred to the coroner.

“The climbing community will be dismayed that this has happened”.

The rescue operation was carried out with a member of the rescue team attached on a long-line.

Nicole Anne Andrews, 28, died after she fell almost 300 metres off The Footstool, a 2764 metres tall mountain on the Eugenie Glacier.

Stephen Dowall, a 52-year-old New Zealand man based in Myanmar, also died on November 26 after he failed to reach Empress Hut in poor conditions.