Irish man stranded on icy peak builds igloo to survive

An Irish mountaineer who was trapped for a day and a half on a snow-capped peak survived by constructing an igloo to keep him and his fellow climber warm.

Danny Murphy, a carpenter from Kerry, was trapped on an icy ledge 5,500 feet above ground. He and his French colleague, Thierry Thouvard, spent 36 hours on the side of Mt Crosscut in the Darran Mountains of New Zealand as they waited for help.

At one stage, they felt that all was lost when a rescue helicopter left the scene after mistakenly thinking the two men were safe. They could not move up or down and were only rescued when they spotted a van in an alcove in the distance and waved their red emergency shelter.