- Jo Morgan, 72, from Wellington, New Zealand, was ascending Mount Hicks summit with friends when she was buried alive in an avalanche
- The snow set around Jo like concrete and she couldn’t move
- Thankfully still holding her ice axe, Jo had to dig herself out to survive
Here, Jo tells her story in her own words.
‘Why are you here, Jo?’ my friend Wolfgang asked, nodding towards the icy mountain.
That was a good question. It was 2011 and I’d just signed up for a climbing course.
Living a comfortable life, I had a wonderful husband, Gareth, then 58, four great kids, Sam, 35, Jessi, 32, Floyd, 27, and Ruby, 23, – and a growing tribe of grandchildren.
So why was I risking it to climb hazardous icy peaks? I was 58, and some people thought me crazy.
But somewhere between the crunch of snow under my boots and the rhythm of ice axe, step, breathe, I discovered that on the mountainside, nothing else mattered.
‘Why are you taking the old lady up there?’
Not the housework, not the worries, not even time – just the next step.
I’d always been drawn to adventure. The youngest of eight kids, I learned early on to be independent.
At 15, I bought a 50cc motorbike with money from after-school jobs in our home town of Invercargill, NZ, and taught myself how to fix it.
Aged 21 I married Gareth, an economist, and we went on to have our four children.
We lived in a gas-guzzling Bedford house bus, travelling the country and picking up part-time work.
But my love for motorbikes never faded.
When all the kids had grown up and flown the coop, Gareth and I started touring the world on our bikes, visiting more than 110 countries.
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It was magical. But still, nothing quite spoke to my soul like climbing did.
That’s where Wolfgang, – a professional guide, came in. He became my climbing partner. Tough himself, he never treated me like I was fragile.
Together, we tackled long, punishing climbs where I’d come home so exhausted I could barely move for a week.
Gareth was wonderfully tolerant.
My kids were terrified, but they understood how much it meant to me.
‘We pushed ourselves to reach Empress Hut, a gruelling 14-hour climb’
After seven years of climbing together, when I was 65, Wolfgang and I had nearly completed our goal of climbing all 24 peaks over 3000 metres in the Southern Alps.
Mt Hicks was our second-to-last.
‘Why are you taking the old lady up there?’ people would ask him.
‘Why not?’ he’d reply.
Wolfgang, then 58, planned to retire after we finished and move to Australia where his wife, Tracey, was waiting.
In October 2018, we set out with our friend, Martin, 50.
We pushed ourselves to reach Empress Hut, a gruelling 14-hour climb.
READ MORE ‘I Was Buried Alive’
‘Bedtime,’ Wolfgang said. ‘Mount Hicks summit tomorrow.’
At 1am, we woke, layered up, and ate our muesli. By 2am, we were moving, headlamps cutting through the darkness.
The snow crunched beneath our crampons as we climbed in silence.
By 5am, the sky began to lighten.
Suddenly, everything changed. A fast, massive wall of snow came roaring down like an ocean wave.
‘A fast, massive wall of snow came roaring down like an ocean wave’
It swallowed Martin instantly. Wolfgang, higher up, lost his footing.
I heard him swear.
Then silence.
I was dragged down the mountain, tossed like a rag doll as I tumbled around 200 metres, before everything stopped.
Coming to a halt, I was buried. The snow had set around me like concrete.
I couldn’t move. My left arm was trapped beneath me, my legs pinned. But somehow, my face was clear. I could breathe.
‘Is everyone okay?’ I called out, but there was no answer.
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My headlamp still shone brightly.
I reached for the emergency beacon in my chest pocket.
My hand was cold and clumsy, but I managed to activate it. A red light began to flash.
I started digging, using my ice axe, which I’d somehow managed to hold onto the entire time.
It took nearly an hour to free myself completely.
When I finally pulled myself out, the mountain was eerily still.
There was no sign of Wolfgang or Martin.
The rope that they’d been tied to disappeared deep into the snow.
Then my phone rang. It was a man from the rescue team, alerted by my beacon.
‘I started digging…It took nearly an hour to free myself completely’
‘We’re coming to get you,’ he said.
I tried to search for my friends, but the slope was too unstable.
I knew they hadn’t survived. It didn’t feel real.
Why them, and not me? I wondered, devastated.
‘Thank God you’re okay,’ Gareth cried when I called him.
Four hours later a helicopter arrived and took me down to Mount Cook Village. Miraculously, I didn’t have even a bruise.
Later that morning, recovery teams found Martin and Wolfgang.
I couldn’t believe they were gone.
Reaching out to their families I offered my condolences.
A few months later, Tracey, me and Wolfgang’s friends climbed together to scatter his ashes on his favourite mountain.
Less than a year after the avalanche, I returned to climbing because I still had one peak left – Mount Torres – the last of the 24 we set out to conquer.
I didn’t quite make it to the summit but I know Wolfgang would have been proud of me.
These days, I’m a grandma of 10, aged from 22 to just nine months.
I still have three motorbikes, and Gareth and I have just returned from motorbiking through West Africa. I broke my leg coming off my Ducati – ironically near my front gate!
So I haven’t climbed recently, but I’m not ruling it out for the future.
Now 72, I’ve had a knee replacement and I live with scleroderma, which affects my circulation.
But I refuse to give up.
I didn’t start young and I didn’t follow the rules. And I’ve lost people I loved along the way.
But I’ve also lived more fully than I ever imagined.
As long as I can put one foot in front of the other, I’m not done yet.
Jo’s book ‘Dancing with the Machine: Adventures of a Rebel’ is available on Amazon.
