Climbing Mount Cook - A Collection of Historical Mountaineering Accounts of Expeditions to the Southern Alps of New Zealand

Various

Description

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 22 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528764018
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Climbing Mount Cook
A Collection of Historical Mountaineering Accounts of Expeditions to the Southern Alps of New Zealand
By
Various Authors
Copyright 2011 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
Mountain Panorama - A Book of Winter Sports and Climbing. Max Robertson
Ten Great Mountains. R L G Irving
The High Alps of New Zealand - Or, A trip to the Glaciers of the Antipodes with an Ascent of Mount Cook. William Spotswood Green
WYNFORD VAUGHAN THOMAS
Mt. Cook and I
Commentator, interviewer, writer, raconteur, globe-trotter, gourmet, all these and more go to the make-up of the mercurial personality of Wynford Vaughan Thomas. His life is always exciting and full of infinite variety, but he has a ruling passion: whenever the slightest opportunity occurs there is no holding him - he is off up a mountain. The Royal Tour of Australia and New Zealand, on which he was one of the BBC commentators, was no exception: a break in the Tour itinerary gave him the chance he wanted and guide Harry Ayres - the man who taught Sir Edmund Hillary his craft - saw to the rest. Wynford approached Mount Cook .
Let me admit, that, in terms of peaks conquered or even of passes traversed, my visit to the Southern Alps was a complete and abject failure. I set out with high hopes of standing on the summits of Cook or Tasman, or at least of having the Minarets within my grasp. I was repulsed from all three before I d even got to grips with the mountains. I fled from the Minarets before a swiftly advancing north-wester. The summit rocks on Cook remained formidably iced for the whole of my stay. Tasman seemed certain to yield and then produced an icy wind from nowhere that made the delicate step cutting up the Syme ridge an unjustifiable risk. So I cannot claim that I have a single New Zealand peak to my credit.
But, as so often happens on mountains, my failure in the Southern Alps gave me as much pleasure as resounding success elsewhere. I could not help feeling that I had been supremely lucky even to get in amongst the high peaks, and to see, with my own eyes, those superb ice-clad ranges about which I had read in far-distant London, over 10,000 miles on the other side of the world. My mountaineering in New Zealand had to be sandwiched in between my broadcasting engagements in covering the Royal Tour. I stretched the goodwill of my colleagues almost to breaking point to have, first of all, a few days based on the Glacier Hotel at Waiho on the western side of the ranges, and then a spell operating from the Hermitage on the eastern side.

WYNFORD VAUGHAN THOMAS and Harry Ayres - the man who taught Sir Edmund Hillary his craft .
I shall never forget my first sight of the great peaks. We had been driving all day down the West coast from the old-fashioned little township of Hokitika, where they still live in spirit in the care-free days of the gold-rush. On the western side of the Southern Alps the New Zealand bush reaches its most opulent development. It is a fantastic tangle of vegetation, and our road seemed to be a green tunnel driven under the gigantic tree-ferns. Suddenly we came to a clearing. I looked up and, at what seemed an impossible angle overhead, there stood the summits - with their spotlessly white ice-falls glittering in the sun, framed by the vivid green of the bush. Is there anywhere else in the world where you get such an astonishing juxtaposition of snow and jungle?

THE WESTLAND BUSH is a fantastic tangle of vegetation .

ABOVE THE BUSH , thrusting down to 600 ft. above
The summits stand so close to the sea, and the glaciers drop so steeply, that they thrust their way down into the bush to within 600 feet above sea-level. I could hardly wait to get onto the ice and that very evening, in the friendly Glacier Hotel - since, alas, severely damaged by fire - I laid my plans with guide Harry Ayres. With some doubt in his mind as he saw my rather portly figure, he suggested the Minarets as our first target. The Minarets stand near Graham saddle that leads over the main divide from the western glaciers and snowfields of the Franz Josef to the great glacier system of the Tasman on the eastern side. They cannot rank amongst the toughest of the higher New Zealand peaks, but they are fine ice and snow expeditions. As Harry said, They ll give you a good idea of the character of New Zealand climbing .
Next day saw us making our way up the Franz Josef glacier to the Aylmer Hut, which is perched on a great rock spur above the ice-fall of the Franz. It wasn t long before I realised that New Zealand climbing did indeed have a character all its own, and that its first peculiarity lay in the extraordinary amount of kit and food that you were expected to carry for the simplest expeditions. We were, after all, climbing in the best-known part of the Southern Alps. There was a hut ahead where we could get shelter for the night, yet we were humping loads of fifty to sixty pounds as a matter of course.

level, is the snout of the Franz Josef glacier .

AMONG THE SERACS of the lower Franz .
The reason soon became clear. When I talked of the best-known part of the Southern Alps I was using Swiss Alpine standards. Even in the Mount Cook area, which has been most extensively explored, the huts are few and far between. And, any descent on the wrong side of the range will land you, not - as in Switzerland - in a hospitable, populated valley, but in a tangled bush which, quite literally, may be completely unexplored. New Zealanders must be prepared to create their own bases when they go climbing, and must learn to hump huge packs long distances over difficult country. But this gives them a tremendous advantage when it comes to modern Himalayan climbing. They can live off the land anywhere, and don t mind how much they carry at high altitudes. As one distinguished climber explained, No wonder New Zealanders do well in Himalayan work. Why, they re a lot of white Sherpas!
I had plenty of chance, as we fought our way up the Franz Josef, to appreciate another reason for New Zealanders Himalayan success. They are all natural snow and ice men. They have to be. The great New Zealand peaks resemble the Himalayas more than the Swiss Alps in the type of problem they present. The upper ridges can get plastered with ice at impossible angles, and the glaciers are on a scale that make them worthy of comparison with the ice-rivers of the Karakoram. There are ice-falls like the Hochstetter and the Franz Josef itself, which remind experts of the Khumbu approach to Everest. I could not withhold my admiration for the skill with which Harry Ayres took us through the tumbled wilderness of the seracs on the Franz. Here, I realised, was one of those natural climbers who could hold his own in any company.

MISCHIEVOUS , comic and fantastically human: the Kea of the high bush .
Harry Ayres is now just on forty and must be New Zealand s leading guide, and, indeed, one of her most outstanding climbers. He is lean, wiry, of average height but with enormous reserves of energy tucked away in a compact frame. He has a legendary list of first ascents to his credit, and can also claim to have been the man who taught Sir Edmund Hillary his craft. He would be an asset to any Himalayan expedition, but finds it almost impossible to get away. New Zealand has only a small corps of professional guides, who are all concentrated in the Mount Cook area, and Harry is in great demand. The professionals naturally help to maintain the standard, and guides like Mick Bowie, chief guide at the Hermitage and Harry himself, feel themselves to be the men who must set the example of safe yet brilliant climbing.
New Zealand climbing clearly faces the same problem as British climbing. The mountains have made an overwhelming appeal to the younger generation, and thousands of youngsters are now setting out for the hills, not all of them willing to serve the stern apprenticeship necessary for tackling the severe problems presented by the greater routes of the Southern Alps. The old hands and the professional guides are untiring in their efforts to hand on the correct technique and, above all, the correct mental approach to the hills.
Untiring is hardly the word to use about my own approach to the mountains. I was very much out of training, and by the time I had staggered up to the Aylmer Hut I felt as if I had reached the South Col on Everest. But I revived with the application of innumerable cups of tea. It seemed to me that the New Zealand climbers can exist for days in the wilderness as long as they have an occasional cup of tea! And as I sipped my tenth cup, in the midst of this superb wilderness of ice and snow, I was introduced to yet another peculiarity of New Zealand climbing. I met the Keas.
The Kea is a parrot that frequents the high bush and the upper ranges. He s got a bad reputation for attacking young lambs, but he is also the most mischievously comic bird I ve yet come across. The Keas round the Aylmer hut were extremely tame. They would hop up to me as I sat watching the sunset, give me a quizzical glance and utter a cynical Kaa sound, as if to say, Don t think much of your chances of climbing tomorrow . Then they would go and hop into the hut when they thought nobody was looking and emerge with some treasure trove.
In this case I was horrified to see that it was one of my climbing boots. The Kea gave a quick chuckle, then flew off with it high over the glacier. If ever my heart was in my boots, it was then, as I saw my preciou