Queenstown professional skier Pete Oswald was waiting for a photo on the last run of a heli-skiing day when something small and woolly came tumbling down the slope behind him. Minutes later the photo shoot had a new subject: Oswald carrying an exhausted sheep down the mountain in his arms, with photographer Dan Power capturing every step.
The sheep rescue in the Hector Mountains
Oswald was in the Hector Mountains on a trip with Southern Lakes Heliski, shooting for Snow Action magazine. While Power set up a shot, Oswald noticed snow hitting his ski boot and looked round. About 100 metres away, at the bottom of a groove the animal had carved down a steep, rocky slope, lay a sheep with its head tucked under its body.
It was alive and still moving. Oswald got it to its feet, but it was too exhausted to walk steadily. In his words, “it would take a few steps and then lose its footing.” So he picked it up and carried it several hundred metres down to a flatter, grassy spot.
A farm boy on skis
Oswald grew up on a farm in Marlborough, and that background showed in how he handled the animal. His father later suggested the well-camouflaged sheep had probably escaped a muster or two and had been roaming the high country for some time. Oswald expected it to make a full recovery.
The Hector Mountains near Queenstown
The Hector Mountains rise in Otago, in the South Island, just south of the Remarkables and close to Queenstown. The range runs for about 40 km beside the southern part of Lake Wakatipu, and in places its western face drops steeply to the lake beside State Highway 6. To the east lies the Nevis valley, tussock country that boomed in the Otago gold rush of the 1860s.
The highest summit is Mount Tūwhakarōria, 2,307 m, which had no official name until 2013. The southern Hectors were an early skiing site for the New Zealand Alpine Club, which built a hut and a basic ski field with a tow there, but skiers moved on when Coronet Peak, with more reliable snow, was developed in the 1950s. Today operators such as Southern Lakes Heliski fly skiers into the range.
More animal encounters on skis
Skiers and animals cross paths more often than you might think. A duck was rescued from a frozen pond in Norway, Juha Salo made friends with a ringed seal pup on the Finnish coast, and Paolo Seimandi photographed alpine ibex climbing a near-vertical dam wall.
- A Duck Rescue at a Frozen Pond in Norway
- Juha Salo’s Seal-Pup Encounter on Finland’s Coast
- Alpine Ibex on a Dam Wall: Paolo Seimandi’s Photographs
Related reading
- Ten Ways to Make a Ski Season More Memorable
- Seven Ski Destinations: Mountains, Ski Culture and Different Kinds of Trips
- Let Me Take You to the Mountain: GoPro’s Andes Adventure
- Dub Roots: Dubsatch Collective’s Alta Ski Film
- This Is Skiing: A Fan-Made Action Compilation
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