Ridge Top Rescue

Behind the scenes of The Kepler Challenge, held in early December last year, a gruelling 60km running race through Fiordland National Park, is a large crew of volunteers who keep the event running each year, including MAST apprentice Dane Frew from Steve Gooding Marine in Invercargill.

As part of a communications crew, Dane was helping retrieve a radio repeater by helicopter at the end of the day. The plan was simple: land, grab the gear and head home. The helicopter touched down. The pilot and technician stepped out to collect the repeater, about ten metres away. Dane stayed in the back seat.

Then he felt it move. “It started rocking,” Dane recalls. “I thought it was just the wind, so I didn’t think anything of it.” Moments later, the helicopter tilted sharply, coming to rest at a 45-degree angle. “And then I just felt the back lift up. I was like, oh shit – I just need to get out of here.”

Dane unclipped his seatbelt and jumped, just as the helicopter began to roll. As he left the skid, the force of the still-spinning rotor wash hit him, then the machine came down. “I sort of ragdolled down the hill and I could just hear it smashing around me. I’m waiting for everything to just turn off.”

When it finally did, the wreckage lay scattered down the slope. “I looked back and there were just bits of helicopter everywhere.”

With two broken elbows and cuts from head to toe, Dane climbed back up to the ridge, where two relieved crew members were waiting.“ The pilot just gave me a massive hug,” he says.

Later, he was told he had fallen around 30 metres. “I reckon it was more like 10 or 15 though,” says Dane. “It was a steep cliff. I felt fine at the time, but once we sat down, everything started getting sore.” Dane spent Christmas recovering. By the new year, he was back at work and back into his apprenticeship.

His Training Advisor, Mike Howe, says that his resilience is no surprise. “I’ve known Dane from day one of his training and he’s always stood out. He’s the kind of guy who puts everything into what he does,” says Mike. “Those same qualities – a strong mind and a great attitude – are exactly what you see in how he handled this.”

For Dane, who started learning to fly at age 14, it was just another challenge to push through: a dramatic moment on a remote ridge, and then straight back to work and assessments as soon as he could.