‘Son of Queenstown' remembered

Otago Daily Times

2 days ago

The late Bruce Grant. PHOTO: SUPPLIED
If Queenstown's the world's adventure capital, no-one epitomised that better than Bruce Grant.
That even applied to the tragic end of his life — succumbing to "the mother of storms" after becoming the first Kiwi to summit the world's second highest mountain, K2, without oxygen.
Only 31, this 'son of Queenstown' — as he's described on a plaque in the Gardens — had already packed in a lifetime of adventures.
Born in the Sydney St maternity home his family once lived opposite, Bruce's mum Ros, who's 93, was a teacher and his dad, the late John, a builder.
The youngest of four siblings, he started skiing earlier than the others — "he sort of got dragged along", sister Christine, one year his elder, says.
He attended primary and secondary school on Ballarat St, finishing at the latter's new Fryer St campus.
Christine says then-skifield owner Mount Cook provided schools with ex-rental gear which Bruce started with.
The pair would later miss a lot of school as they ascended the ranks to national ski team selection.
New Zealand downhill champ for five years, he and Christine skied that discipline, under the influence of a Canadian coach, at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics.
Bruce finished 31st and was also chosen for the '88 Calgary Olympics, but an injured leg didn't recover in time for him to compete.
He got into parapenting soon after it was introduced to Queenstown, first flying solo before becoming a commercial tandem pilot for eight years.
After summiting many mountains, including Mt Cook seven times, he'd often ski or parapente off them, sometimes for films he starred in.
One was The Leading Edge, for which Queenstowner Mathurin Molgat hired him after watching him ski The Remarkables.
"He was an exceptional athlete, and he never said 'no'.
"If you said, 'you want to do this, Bruce?' it didn't matter what the adventure was, he was in it."
They even tried, before crashing, to mountain bike down The Remarkables' 'Elevator' chute.
Mathurin found him the strong, silent type.
"We drove up to Mt Cook and I think there were about four words exchanged.
"He was a very content, self-contained character."
Christine says he also meditated — "he was contemplative".
A sculpture in his memory in the Queenstown Gardens. PHOTO: PHILIP CHANDLER
In terms of extreme adventure, skiing down Austria's long and difficult Hahnenkamm run put him in elite company.
His main mountaineering buddy was then-Queenstowner Kim Logan, who marvelled at some of his amazing Fiordland climbs.
Although about 10 years his senior and more experienced, he says Bruce was mentally and physically the better mountaineer.
"His safety margin was higher than mine."
The pair were among rescuers who saved the life of a German backpacker on the Routeburn Track in extreme conditions, winning them all Royal Humane Society bravery medals.
Kim recalls the police afterwards shouted them breakfast at Queenstown's then Gourmet Express and they got "absolutely smashed" on Irish coffees — "forget about the coffee, just bring us the Irish [whiskey]".
The pair's '95 assault on K2, considered the world's most dangerous mountain, was preceded by a major community fundraising effort.
Kim says he turned around just after Camp 4 —"it was my own condition and the weather" — and a few hours later expedition leader Peter Hillary did, too.
Bruce and five others subsequently reached the summit, but all perished soon after when "the mother of storms" blew through, Kim says.
Christine's sure if they'd had an inkling they wouldn't have summitted.
"There was a very strong wind which was unforeseen really, in my understanding it came from the bottom up."
Ironically, at the same time his brother Andrew, nicknamed 'Buzz', was experiencing a huge storm after summiting Mt Cook.
When Kim returned to Queenstown, a memorial service was held in the Anglican church, after which hardy souls ventured in very wild weather to the Gardens where Christine's husband Dan Kelly's sculpture of a hand grasping an ice axe, in Bruce's memory, had been installed that day.
At the time, Christine told Mountain Scene: "Bruce achieved a majority of his goals, there's not many people who could ski off Mt Cook, let alone fly.
"He was aware of the fragility of human life in nature, he understood the reputation of K2 fully.
"He achieved this goal, who knows what he would have achieved next?"
Bruce Grant won every Dash for Cash he entered. Thirty years after his death, Sunday's Dash for Cash on Queenstown's Coronet Peak — a fundraiser for the Bruce Grant Youth Trust — is being held in his honour, from 2pm.