ASCENT OF MOUNT IDA.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Volume I, Issue 45, 3 October 1863, Page 6

ASCENT OF MOUNT IDA.

From the Correspondent of the Telegraph.

On Tuesday last your " special," in company with a miner, started to make the ascent of Mount Ida. Before giving you an account of our trip, I may as well tell you that Mount Ida is situated at the head of the Hogburn Gully, and is the highest point in the Kakanui Range, being 5498 feet above the level of the sea. We left the township in the morning, and wending our way up the gully, 6oon reached tlie Ewe Burn Creek, from which the race is being brought in. From this spot a spur rises almost perpendicularly, and is the leading spur to the top of the range. Having crossed the Ewe Bum we struck up a gully,

down which flows a streamlet, known as the Deep Creek. This part of the walk was easy travelling, and very pretty. We passed numerous cascades, some of them 20 to 30 feet high. Having followed the gully for about a mile, we commenced to ascend the spur, the gradient of which is about 1 in 3. Arrived at the top, we sat down to take breath, and had a fine view of the surrounding country. Having refreshed the inner man with a biscuit and some snow water, we commenced the real ascent of the mountain In several places we had to cross snow forty feet deep, but it was frozen on the top, and by digging our heels well in we got over. The whole spur was covered with snow, and sometimes large masses of this would break away and slide down into the gully, some 1500 feet below us, with awful velocity. Once we had a narrow escape ourselves of going down nolens volens on one of these avalanches within about two hundred feet of the top. Up this two hundred feet we had positively to crawl, sticking our hands and feet into the frozen snow to hold on by. At last we arrived at the top, and I must say we were amply rewarded for any trouble we had in the ascent. The view was magnificent; in front of us frowned the Rock and Pillar Range, at the foot of which was to be seen the Taieri Lake, seemingly as placid as a mill pond. The Mount Ida township looked like a little white speck amongst the hills. On our right was the Old Man Ratige, and below us we could see the Manuherikia River, the source of which is somewhere amongst the ranges on which we stood. On turning round and looking north, we saw for miles and miles nothing but ranges covered with snow, and gullies half filled in the same manner. In some of those gullies the snow must remain all the year round, as the sun cannot get at them. We had a capital glass with us, but could see no traces of vegetation; trees there were none, nor was there even grass. We cleared the snow away in one or two places, but found the mountain composed entirely of rock. It was intensely cold at the summit, so we lighted our pipes and smoked until the setting sun warned us to commence the descent. I found this style of travelling the easiest, although I feared we should come down with a run; however, we reached the bottom in safety, and arrived in the jtownship about nine o'clock at night, quite tired out. From where we started to the top of Mount Ida is about nine miles, the greater part of which is up hill.