THE MAJESTY OF THE HILLS

Hokitika Guardian, 19 April 1932, Page 8

THE MAJESTY OF THE HILLS

MOUNT MOLTKE. THE GLORY OF THE HEIGHTS. (By Elsie K. Moi'ton in the Auckhuui Herald). In the starry dawn I clubbed up through the dense thicket surrounding Defiance Hut, and after a stiff- pull up the first part of the cliinh to the crest of Mount Moltke sat down on a jutting c-ragg to take breath and to watch the glorious pageant of sunrise on the Alps. Gradually,the l(igt bright star paled in the primrose flush of sunrise; the first flames kindled on glorious Elie do Beaumont ran swiftly up the Minarets and de la Beche, and'swept* within a circling banner of flame all the noble peaks and snowiields of the Great Divide. The bright beams swept down and down, played hide-and-seek with the mist-clouds shrouding Waiho, let the still waters of lovely Mapourika, set gem-like in forest depths, .mil turned the Waiho River to a lihlwn of silver trailing out to the oe'.“.ui. When the guide appeared, soon alter sunrise, the world was full of suinshino and warmth, and birds were singing in the mountain forest through wh ch our track still lay. It was time to be moving up and on toward our goal, the summit of Mount Moltke, a climb of over 6000 ft. Up and up- we climbed, pulling ourselves up steep pinches by tree-roots- and creepers, and coming out at last to the wild grandeur and picturesque desolation of Castle Rocks and their lonely Alpine garden half way up the mountain side. The Rocks are mighty crags ri. ing in strange, jumbled pillars and pylons like the ruins of some curious bit of primeval achitccture wrought when the world was young. And at the foot of the ruins, in this rocky, arid waste, bloomed a garden of loveliness such as one glimpses only in dreams, a garden of flowers snow-white, and gold, of rare and fragile loveliness enhamed by the desolation surrounding them. Here were exquisite Alpine lilies, ranunculus Lvallii, chalices of ivory uplifted on straight, slender stems, each wide, saucer-shaped leaf still holding a tiny draught of crystal dew. Every nook and crevice held some tiny flower, starry edelweiss or snow-white gentian. The latter were like a smaller crocus, branching in terminal clusters that held sometimes as many as a hundred blooms on 'a single stem. White curisias glowed like stars beneath the towering rocfs, and the ground was carpeted with beautiful mountain daisy, Celmeeia ' coriaeea, in appearance like a very fine white aster with golden centre, and with the senecia, another variety of mountain daisy similar to the pvrethruin ok, the lower world. All these flowers were snow-white. Presently gold—the splendid ranunculus godleyanus, a monster mountain buttercup larger tlnjn a half-crown.

I gazed enraptured upon that glorious Alpine garden, the loveliest wild garden I had ever btflield. It was the indescribable fragility and pale, wistful beauty of these snow-flowers that held the mind in thrall. Why should l toil upwards for thousands of feet in the hot sun when I could lie down in the grateful shade of these great rocks, and gaze all day upon this exquisite wild garden? But the guide was moving steadily up the steep and rugged mountain ■side, and one doesn’t argue with Alpine guides. With a sigh ! stopped and drained the dewdrops from six of the largest lily leaves; drinking is strictly taboo on a mountain climb, and the Moltke snowfield was a long, long way above. Up and up 1 toiled, over almost perpendicular slopes covered with rough shaley rock and great boulders. Presently the grey junta in side was cut sharply v.ni. ihe dazzling gleam of white ice. am: *-*• • came to the edge of the Moltke '.'.nowfield. Up and ever up across the snow toward the high western ridge leading up to the summit. The going was much easier now, although the heat ol the s un heating back from the snow [ was terriffic.

So long had I lingered at Ca. tie Rocks that it was now almost lunch time, although the Moltke climb usually takes only about three hours from Defiance. From the snowfield we passed to the western ridge, and continued our climb to the foot of the peak.

“I think we’ll have lunch here, and do the peak afterwards,” said the guide tactfully. Half an hour later I was sitting on a rock on the summit of Moltke and I knew why mountain cers always want to get to the very tip-top. Three wonders on one brief morning—dawn on the glacier, the Alpine garden, and now, fifty miles

of glorious panoroma of the s noW peaks of the Great Divide, stretching in a half-circle from north to south. Suppreiue, predominant, rose- Cook and Tasman, glorious in their robes ol white, so close that it seemed as if another hour’s tramping acmss the snowfield in the clouds would bring us to their crests, dazzling in a sky so intensely blue that it seemed almo t black against the glare of the sir. w. We looked out- over a glorious company of mountain monarchs, Elie do Beaumont, Green, Coronet, the Minarets de la Beche, Jervois, Spencer, Conway, Douglas, Haidinger, Lendenfeldt —all between 900 and 10,000 feet in height. Below this glittering world of ice and snow stretched the rock ribs of the lesser ranges, striking down into the forest-girt valleys of Waiho and Weheka. Of the lower world we could see nothing, for swiftly, silently a sea of fog had come rolling in from the ocean.

For a long time not a word was spoken. We sat there in golden sunshine on the roof of the world, the earth beneath submerged in that white tide of rising fog, nothing between us and the high blue sky. The silence of the everlasting hills enfolded the whole world, a grave, majestic stillness tlu c was the very soul and essence of the spirit o e the mountains.