Made for a hell of a story...

Yesterday while hiking I reached Avalanche Peak, and then decided to head across a ridge to Mt Rolleston (there are pics of both on my Picasa).  I made it about 7/8 of the way across to the ridge when I reached a section that I couldn't pass.  I then headed down the mountain from where I was stopped.  After a short while I found that I reached cliffs, and couldn't go any further; this forced me start heading across the cliff tops looking for a way down.  After about four hours of searching, I was exhausted, cut up a little from all the sharp shale (the loose shale is called scree, and is pretty much impossible to climb up), and was stuck in a small area a few hundred feet from the top of the ridge.  It had become too steep to continue on, and too steep to go down or up.  Because of the loose shale I couldn't even go back where I came from.  I was completely stuck on a cliff far away from everything.  I sat on a small ridge and started yelling for help; I could see a few people in the distance on the Avalanche Peak, and after about a half hour of yelling, I could tell they had heard me, and were scrambling for help.  In the meantime I inched my way around until I got a tiny bit of cell reception and managed to call 111 (their 911).  They operator took all my location info, and then informed me that search and rescue would send out a chopper immediately.  The Chch police then called me and told me the chopper was on it's way, and to hold tight.  I bundled up, as I was far far above the tree line, and since I had stopped hiking I was cooling down quickly.  I was stuck on the ledge for about two hours in total, and freezing by the time the chopper showed up.  I waved around a yellow bag I had to get their attention and within minutes I was throwing my backpack to them and climbing up the strut and into the chopper.  On the ground the local search and rescue team was waiting (expecting potential injuries, hypothermia, etc).  They took me into their headquarters and took my info for the police report, made me a hot coffee and bundled me up.  After a while they took me back to my hostel, and I thanked them all repeatedly.  I'm fine now, but it was more than a little scary being stuck up there.  It turns out two people without backpacks ran from the peak to the village and informed them about the same time I got through to 111.  They used my info, as well as what the people on the peak had told me about my last known location on the ridge (they couldn't see me from where I was yelling) to find me.  All is well, and I've more than learned my lesson about deviating from marked tracks.