THE SEARCHERS

GEOFF WAYATT

WanakaSAR, 48 years

WHEN GEOFF WAYATT moved to Wānaka to open up a climbing school in 1973, he found a small rural town few would recognise as the climbing mecca it has become.

“It was a farming and holiday community and we were the first of the adventure tourism operators,” Wayatt recalls.

Back then, he says there was no local search and rescue (SAR) service. When people got into trouble in Mt Aspiring National Park, the operations were coordinated from Dunedin.

“There was no significant tramping or climbing community in Wānaka. There were just three or four local people who would do the initial response.”

So Wayatt got together with a few recreational climbers – a local plumber, a carpenter and a farmer – and established what would become WānakaSAR.

“We had the embryo of a nicely balanced group. I realised we were all vulnerable to have incidents, so I felt some responsibility to give back. It’s just part of what you do.”

For three months of the year, Wayatt lived in a tent camp on Shovel Flat, not far from Aspiring Hut in the Matukituki Valley, which served as the headquarters for his climbing school, and would often be first on the scene for rescues in the park.

“Typically it would be a climber who hadn’t returned to a hut and someone would raise the alert and