When the rescue helicopter peeled away from circling the summit of Mt Gudgenby in the middle of winter last year, with darkness approaching Senior Constable Paul Yates shouldered his 25kg pack and prepared for a very tough foot slog.
Winds gusting over 100km/h had made an aerial winching of three people stranded near the summit of the 1738-metre peak impossible.
One of the stranded had broken an ankle on sheet ice. All three were in T-shirts and shorts, with just a few light packs and scant provisions.
"It was a pretty dire situation," the ACT-based Australian Federal Police search and rescue specialist admitted.
"We knew that we had to get to them because we knew they certainly wouldn't survive the night up there with the weather as it was."
So leading the way, with only head torches to pick their way through the dense scrub, his team set off.
As they climbed the wind chill factor dropped below minus 15 degrees.
Navigating by handheld GPS and old-fashioned compass, the police officer led the small team, including four state emergency service volunteer members, upwards in the steep, extreme conditions.
"At several stages we were on hands and knees on the sheet ice, pretty treacherous really," he said.
It took five long hours for the rescue team to reach the exposed location, just below the summit.
They arrived around 2am to find all three of the stranded huddled and shivering but thankfully still alive. All were in various stages of hypothermia but the injured woman was suffering the worst.
"You could say they were pretty pleased to see us," he said with typical police understatement.
Snr Constables Yates and Peter Ibbott quickly double-wrapped the injured woman - who couldn't be moved - tightly into a double sleeping bag. It's what the search and rescue people call a "burrito wrap". They then shared out their protective clothing.
At a makeshift, slightly protected campsite some 30 metres downslope, the team carefully heated water on tiny shielded campstoves and placed hot water bottles inside the tightly wrapped woman's sleeping bag. They then stood vigil, waiting for daylight as the freezing wind howled around them.
"Pete [Ibbott] stayed with her [the injured woman] right through the night and every half hour I would climb up and check how they were doing and keep their spirits up," Snr Constable Yates said.
The minor miracle they needed was a drop in windspeed to allow the Toll rescue helicopter, with its onboard paramedic, to safely perform an aerial extraction.
Around 7am, against the odds, the wind eased and the chopper was able to lift the stranded people to safety.
Snr Constables Ibbott and Yates, together with Sergeant Andrew Craig who manned the forward command communications all night and provided vital support for the team, were last week named recipients of an Australian Search and Rescue award in the professional category.
