Two climbers have been rescued after spending a cold night in Queenstown's Remarkables mountain range.

Chris Prudden​, leader of Wakatipu LandSAR's alpine cliff rescue team, said the Australian men were well equipped for their hike on Friday.

When the weather turned, the pair tried to take a shortcut off the Grand Traverse by abseiling down the western face to the lower Queen's Drive hiking trail, he said.

STUFF Chris Prudden​, leader of Wakatipu LandSAR's alpine cliff rescue team.

"Where they went down wasn't actually a shortcut, it's kind of a long cut."

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They ended up on a steep face in the blowing rain, and were forced to bivouac for the night.

The men activated a personal locator beacon and phoned 111.

Prudden said a team of six went to the mountain on Saturday morning, but accessing the rescue site was difficult.

They waited for the weather to clear, and Prudden went up attached to a strop underneath a helicopter.

"I saw one of the helmets sitting on top of a rock and I grabbed it because I wanted him to wear it on the way out underneath the helicopter and for some reason it wouldn't move, then I realised it was frozen to the rock.

"They would have had quite a cold night there. They said they sat and shivered for about 10 hours."

He clipped the men on quickly, but didn't manage to get all of their gear.

"The pilot was pretty happy to get out of there, he said it wasn't that easy to hold the helicopter steady.

The equipment left behind included a camera with photos from their trip.

Other climbers might be able to recover it in the next couple of weeks, Prudden said.

The men were uninjured, but were "pretty tired, pretty cold, pretty hungry".

He said abseiling the west face was the wrong decision in the situation, and the terrain would have gotten easier if they had stayed on the Grand Traverse.

"The way off is actually to stay on the ridge and keep going."

The rescue was "a good outcome", Prudden said.

"We love to go in and try and help people. And in this case they were – if you like – our comrades. They were people who were out there climbing."