MOUNTAIN’S TOLL

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 340, 22 January 1937, Page 4

MOUNTAIN’S TOLL

Thirteenth Victim In Egmont Disasters. With the death of Philip Matthews the 19-year-old Wellington climber whose body was found yesterday by Alpine Club searchers, near the head of the Manganul Gorge Egmont, claimed its 13th. victim. Matthews was apparently driven from the crater by a storm and when attempting to return to synib Hut on Fantham’s Peak, slipped on the ice and glissaded 3000 feet to death. At North Egmont Hostel the wind during the storm reached a velocity ot 50 miles an hour, and l the climber in the crater must have undergone a terrible ordeal. Viewed from Stratford the mountain appears to have been almost denuded ot snow with the advent Of summer, but there are still extensive sheets of ice-covered snow. Climb-

ers who ascended yesterday from Fantham’s Peak needed, crampons, clawed climbing irons, to avoid long spells of step cutting.