WANDERINGS IN WESTLAND

Hokitika Guardian, 13 January 1930, Page 8

WANDERINGS IN WESTLAND

TWO SEASONS ON THE WEST COAST OF NEW ZEALAND.

(By H. E. Newton.)

(Reprinted from the Alpine journal, February 1915.)

We got ii'p at 1 a. m. next morning and had a good fire to breakfast by, but it was 2.50 before we got started, as we had to leave the camp secure in ease we returned that way. We soon got on to the glacier and went along it for two hours by lantern light; we had intended to start up a snow-slope, but we could see that an avalanche had come down it since the previous evening, so we decided to have breakfast and wait for daylight. At 5.10 we started off up a rib of rock to our right; leading up to the left containing-wall of the glacier descending from Harper's Saddle, at the head ol' the Hooker Glacier. At first it was easy climbing, but it gradually got more difficult, and we put on the rope at a gendarme at the junction with the main ridge. We had to carry sleepingbags, as we were sure of being out one night, and my swag, without food, rope, or camera, used to weigh 191 b. This was quite enough of tself to have warned me not to try difficult rock, but in addition I was carrying an ensign camera Q plate) in a tin case outside, as a swag 'takes a good deal of undoing simply to get a photo. However, the climb looked interesting and was only short, so I set off. I had only got about 8 ft. when I got on to a smooth slab, and in the middle my camera, which J had over one shoulder—a most foolish nay of carrying it on rocks—slipped round in front, and instead of getting any body friction, the metal case was as slippery as a piece of ice, in addition to forcing me off the rock. I had time to warn the others, and then slipped back on to the shelf I had started from. The rope checked i any further fall, and mv swag took ! the weight of the fall, so I got off i with a siiglit cut on the head and a bruise on my thigh. We then turned over to our right and cut up the l ard snow to turn the obstacle. It was now 11.10, so we stopped for some food, and to take a series of photos. At 12.30 we started again and soon were wading through soft snow. Unfortunately, the mist winch rises from the wet Westland forest on a sunny day after rain, and hangs on the hills from about 6000 to 8000 ft, made it difficult to be sure of our position, as we had no map that could be relied on for any detail. We wasted a good deal of time arguing, and then, at 3 p. m., the fog lifted for a moment and we saw that we were, close to the saddle; in fifteen minutes we were on it, and after a halt to take photos we started down. The first 300 ft. were very steep, and Graham and I cut steps down in alternate traverses as quickly as we could, but it was slow work, as there was a couple of inches of soft avalanchy snow on top of very hard snow, and we were unable to make long traverses fop fear of falling stones from the rocks on either side of the pass. Nearer the schrund the snow 'got better and we were able to stamp steps; we crossed over under Mt. Hicks, where the schrund was narrow, and decided to shoot it in line, as there was an enormous snow basin below it quite free from crevasses and time was getting precious. However, before I cot out the others started and we all shot over it rather too close to each other to be pleasant. After a brief halt to get the snow out of our \pockets, we set off at 5.45 to go as far down the glacier as possible. We kept at first rather too close to La Perouse, intending to camp at a place where we had slept in 1902 when making the first crossing of Baker’s Saddle into the Copland valley. But the glacier was very broken, much more so than when wo had l>een there before; this is typical of a New Zealand glacier, as they vary from year to year to an extraordinary extent. We then crossed the glacier to some rocks at the foot of Mt. Cook. It was 9 p.m. before we reached them and found an old camn site where the New Zealand party had camped in 1894 before the first ascent of Mt. Cook. After a cup of tea and some food we turned in. It was a beautiful night and we all. slept soundly. Next morning, putting our socks and boots into our sleeping-bags to thaw, we had breakfast. Unfortunately we were unable to get down the rocks on our left and so turn the icefa.H, so we had to go out on to the glacier and ascend a little and then cross to the other side and get through the ioefall on the W. ; it took us one-and-a-half hours from the sleeping’-place before we were dear of tlie fall. We were able then to take off the rope and travel down the level •glacier towards the snout, the last part being along a very loose and toilsome moraine. There is a fair track down 1 the left hank of the "f-vier, hut the bridge over the Hooker had been carried away by a flood that spring and had not been repaired. It was only six miles down the glacier, but it took us three hours from the foot of the ioefall. At 2p. in. we stopped for am hour for food and a photo or two and then started off to the Hermitage, passing a camping party, who were very sarcastic with us for carrying axes over open country, but we tried to explain that wo had been unable to leave them behind. We

readied the Hermitage at o. Soon

after Peter Graham, who lmd been with us in 1903, arrived, then Jack Clark, the chief guide at the Hermitage, and a Mr Low, who is now a member of this Club. After a bath —and I had not had a voluntary hath for a fortnight—we had an excellent dinner that was a delightful change after the eternal bully-beef stew and scone of camp, and we felt quite civilised again. Both Teichelmann and I had been feeling our eyes, the wood smoke of canfp and then the fog on the (pass, which had compelled us to take ofF our glasses, had irritated thein considerably. We found some cocaine in the hotel, and by injecting that and using a tea-leaf compress we wore able to get to sleep.

The next morning Alec Graham took a telegram down to Pukaki, and on his return was to rest at the Hermitage for a couple of days, and then follow us. In the afternoon Teichelmann, Low and I, with P. Graham, set off to walk up'to the Ball Hut, a distance of 12 miles, the last six being beside the Tasman Glacier, Clark following with swags on a horse. Next morning Professor Spencer, of Melbourne, arrived from the Malte Rrun Hut, 6 miles further up the glacier. Curiously enough—for climbers were then very rare in New Zealand —the previous year he had been going up the Tasman while Teichelmann, with Clark and Graham, had been at the Hochstetter Bivouac just Wove making the Erst crossing of. Pjoncer Pass to the Fox, and they had ■>* same time seen Alec Graham and me appear on the col between Tasman and Lendenfeldt, which we had reached from our camp up the Fox. Mr Fitzgerald, in his ‘Climbs in the New Zealand Alps,’ reckoned that the ascent of Tasman from the col would present no difficulty, and certainly we could see none, but it was my fate to reach that col three times in an attempt to. climb Tasman, and to be turned back each time. That route has not been made yet, but I am afraid I

shall have no chance now to be the first to make it.

The Ball Hut lies in a hollow behind the right moraine of the Tasman Glacieir, on the site of Mr Green's fifth camJp. (Leaving it in the afternoon, we walked up the Tasman till we were past the great Hochstetter jcefall, one of the finest ieefalls I have ever seen. Then, turning up the ridge that descends from Mt. Haast, and is the left boundary wall of the Hochstetter icefall, we climbed up it to the bivouac at a height of 6700 ft. This was the scene of Green’s bivouac, and the starting-point for the "fdbtnt attempts 1 ’■ New Zealanders to climb Mt. Cook. It is just a big boulder, below which a flat place; bus been raked and filled with fine gravel; there was also an old nail-can, which served to economise the wood we had been able to carry up. It is a wonderful position: 3000 ft. below lay the Tasman Glacier, at that point II mi lop wide, opposite the great rocky Malte Brun range, culminating in Malte Brun itself, 10,421 ft., a magnificent rock cone. Ten miles up the glacier was Elio de Beaumont. luo'Y) .ft., towering above the saddle leading to the West Coast, while th« main divide continued back to the head of our ridge in a series of peaks and tributary glaciers. Mt. Cook itself is invisible, but to the south lay tluj bust 8 miles of the Tasman, - 1 beyond an extensive view over the Mackenzie country. WC set

off at 6 next morning and reached Glacier 1 Dome in about an hour. Glacier Dome is simply a snow dome on the Haast ridge, far above the head of the Hochstotter icefall, where it is ipossible to turn, over on to the huge neve at the head. Straight u > at the head of the ridge we were on rose Mt. Haast, though the summit lies over in Westland out of sight; then Lendenfeldt, 10,551 ft.; then Tasman, 11,475 ft., completely sheathed in broken glacier; behind it the divide running to Dampier, 11,323 ft.; then the mass of Mt. Cook, 12,349 ft.; while tlie rest of the view took in all that had been seen before from the bivouac.

Our intention had been to try to make a pass back to the La. Perouse valley by a col south of the Silberhorn, the south shoulder of Tasman, but the guides said that it would take very long and that they could not be spared from the Hermitage, for in those days the guiding staff was small, as visitors were infrequent.