WANDERINGS IN WESTLAND

Hokitika Guardian, 30 January 1930, Page 2

WANDERINGS IN WESTLAND

THE BALFOUR RIVER. AND 'GLACIER. [By C. E. Douglas, Explorer, 1893.)

I can come to wlia't' might be called die inter-alpine glaciers, the Waiho md the Fox practically come down to the seaboard flats and the elevation of their terminus is comparatively little above sea level, they can be reached on horseback or on foot without difficulty and they are both within easy reach of settlements, but even to see the Balfour, Perouse, McKerrow and all other glaciers in Westland requires weary journeys into the heart of the mountains, and until tracks of some kind are made they will all remain sealed books to the ordinary tourist, and, where the extraordinary tourist lives and moves I can’t say I. haven’t, seen him yet, to travel perhaps for days over mountains and up gofgy river beds before even a gliirijpge’ of the Snowies can lie obtained, takes the enthusiasm ' out of most periple. .The Globe Trotter says he likes Ipughing it but the fact is he doesn’t even know what roughing means, He must do everything and carry everything himself. There are no meek arid cheap porters to be got in Westland { at present. The time will no doubt , come when guides, porters and obsequious landlords will be common’ in the d.and, but not for some time to come I hope, so all 'I write after this I ,will . have little effect in inducing travellers to penetrate into the mountains till tracks [are made". If ‘: ; ,.the public would only be content with good passable foot tracks, all'.the finest scenery in Westland could be opened out for a few hundred pounds, but the public won’t walk nowadays, chiefly through that modern creation—the female globe trotter. So nothing but expensive graded horse tracks at the very least will do. Again, so long as the .present craze for ice and snow peaks and them alone continues, it is not likely that tourists will pentrate into ranges enduring hardships and seeing on the road only what in their opinion is not worth looking at viz.: Forest, clad moun tains and valleys and gorges festooned' nvith fefrns and creepers. As I consider the gorge—say of the Killcry a far finer sight than, the Franz Josef Glacier, and also of far more scientific interest, so in my . opinion the journey up a V est Coast river through boulder gorges and up precipices is a far better sight than the mass of useless dirty ice at its head. But there, in this matter I am out of the running and considered to have a screw loose somewhere.

Starting from the forks of the Fox and Cooks, an open river leads up the latter stream and then a horse track takes up to the wire bridge where the jriver breaks out of the hills. This may be considered the limit of horse travelling. From there up to the heads of both Cooks and the Balfour has to be done on foot at present. The wire bridge, so called, is not a foot bridge but a wire rope along which an iron cage runs backwards arid forwards' The trip across is decidedly especially to strangers. Getting into the cage requires considerable 'skill as it has often a nasty habit-of starting away when only half The ■ passenger is aboard. Once in, he sits down on-a sort of gridiron’ suggestive of roast missionary and lets go the hook and away he sails into space. At the first of the journey, a stranger generally breaks out in pleasing smiles, but residents know better. The gridiron gets slower and slower and finally gtops about half-way across. Then comes trouble, the wheels refuse to revolve, the hauling rope cuts the hands, and., the traveller sometimes wonders where he would, be if that hauling line broke, . and left him hanging like a guv over the middle of the river, it doesn’t matter who he is,, whether Parson, Quaker or Presbyterian elder, that man cannot..reach the, .other side Without using objeotionatjle adfeetives. I have crossed on those wire cages scores of times and with all sorts of people and in no single instance did the man who put them up, the inventor of the contrivance, the road overseer, chief surveyor and all Government officials in general esejape without vigorous expressions be hurled at their names and memories. But ; .the. strangest thing is every man when across proceeds to explfiin, how if he had put it up, the journey over would ' have been a perpetrial smile. However primitive they are-, a wire cage is decidedly cheap and useful in such out of the way places, and the road overseer ought to overhaul them now and again and see if ail is safe. The main rope will last for years; and even if the hauling line broke any one, not an idiot, cjould still .work himself and cago across, bijt the.spindles of the wheels Are, very liable to corrode, no one ever thinks of oiling them 01looking at the state of the fasten-

ings. To go up the Balfour to the glacier the bridge has not to he crossed. The north side is the one to keep. The distance is about three miles and the travelling is good. A track now nearly grown up saves rough boulder walking for most of the way. At the forks the two branches are jvery nearly alike in size and general appearance. (The Balfour which comes from the north-east is rather more- muddy in summer through Cooks river having a far greater distance to travel from the ice. -fust below the forks on the, north side a

considerable quantity of ;gcld was got in the early days, and a- few huts were standing some ten years ago, when the whole valley of Craig’s creek came away in a large slip covering up everything and altering the level of Cooks river bod to far below the lower forks leaving Craig’s creek an open slip up to the grass. It is up this creek that nearly everyone who has visited the Balfour Glacier has travelled. A. few chains above the face of Craig’s creek the Balfour river can lx* * crossed, summer or winter, floods excepted, by the simple process of jumping a distance of five feet. Some twenty or thiry chains further 'up just where the river breaks out of the gorge it can be crossed on a. natural bridge. Many years ago a. large Rata tree fell across the chasm and then started growing again. To give some idea of its size the barrel of the tree has been covered with a dense mass of tall scrub through which the diggers in the early days cut a track and a stranger j would never thing ho was crossing a growing tree sixty feet above a roaring torrent.

This gorge is said to be impassable for the the whole length, a distance of about half a mile. I did not try it any time I have been up, as there was no occasion to do so, but I know that two prospectors reached the head of the river that way. From the description they gave, I couldn’t make out how they did it. No doubt they didn’t go up the actual gorge but , away above, along the edge oi, the cliffs, and if ever necessary a track will some day be taken that way, but till then, via Craig’s creek is the way at present, if for nothing else but to see the country from a high elevation. The scene from the old cairn at. point K and along the open rigde towards Craig’s peak is one of the finest in Westland. The whole of, the Balfour glacier, the vall.*y of the McKenna, once a glacier,, the singular crag and tail between the two and the peaks of Tasman, Dampier, Cook, Stokes, Sefton, and a number of others can be seen in all their glory from that place only, and summer and winter night and day avalanches are continually. falling from the cliffs of Tasman on to the glacier. The travelling on Craig’s creek up to point E is rough certainly but no cliff climbing or bad boulders. About two-thirds up is the Bivouac camp under an immense boulder. This rock could hardly be called an erratic, as it no doubt is only a breakaway from some clift up above. As a camp it certainly does not shine like all caves and overhanging rocks. It was cold, windy and uncomfortable. To camp in such a place may look poetical and may give a bandit twang to a report, but no bushman or any one with sense would pass a night in such places if anything else was to be had. The shadow of a great rock may be all right on the Sahara or such liice countries, but not in. Westland. A few chains above this boulder the creek forks and the branch to the right is the one to go up. It is open like the main creek with only two falls of twenty feet to climb, just steep enough to make things lively for a few minutes.. Some twenty chains np this creek and marked camp on the map is the limit of timber and a good camp and fire can always he got. From Gillespie? to this spot would be a faildays journey at present with horses hs far as the wire bridge, then with light swags to the camp.- From the camp to the cairn a journey of about an hour, the route is then along the ridge and slope of the spur from Craig’s peak for about half a mile to where the route overlooks the valley of McKenna and Balfour. From that place there are three different ways to go down; first, either straight into McKenna, or take the open to the right keeping on the left of it till an open creek is reached which leads into the McKenna a few chains above its junction with the Balfour, or take the right of the spur and follow down an open creek into the Balfour. This latter route, although it is very steep and full of loose boulders requiring great care going down, is by far the safest. The other two routes have a thousand feet of roc-k and grassy slopes to go down before safely reached, those grassy steep slopes are, in my opinion, the most dangerous part of mountain travelling. In books and newspapers too much stress is laid on the difficulties and dangers of rock and ice, while no mention is made about the danger of a grass slope at an angle of 45 degrees covered with a hard dry stunted grass or scrub more slippery than any ice, and on which is little or no loothold either naturally or that can be made by pick or ice-axe. The hold of the tussock on the rock is so slight that the slightest mistake is fatal.

But to see all !hat is worth seeing, there is r.o occasion to go down o'tl.er of those routes as the view from tho top is far better than any that can he obtained down below where the peaks are stunted by the near vicinity of the cliffs, and the be itself has no particular beauties being covered for nearly its whole length with unsightly masses of debris. The view from Peg 10 at the bend of the glacier is certainly very fine in its wav as Mt. Tasman towers up for nearly eight thousand feet in what might ho called tAvo precipices, one at the iiead of the glacier proper where the ice ends in a cliff a thousand feet high topped with overhanging ice. This upper glacier extends back for thirty or forty chains in a steep slope of ice and snow and then the cliffs rise almost to the top of the mountain, but this can he seen far better from near Point E or Point 1), the saddle or crag and tail, so there is no need to go down on the glacier and then painfully climb up again

unless the traveller is one of those beings who go into a difficult place just to say lie lias been there.

Unlike the Fox and the Franz Josef the Balfour does not show the well defined lines of ice action along the sides of the hills. Still those works are there, only they take a difierent. form, and are much harder to pick up. The top of the Craig and tail nl the ledge at the foot of the cliffs m the gorge and the flat saddles into Alt. Bom’s Creek are decidedly traces of the old elevation of the ice and they are the equivalent of the highest *up line on the other glaciers. The outer and lower lines il they ever existed have been destroyed. No traces