INTERESTING TO ALPINE ADVENTURERS.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 836, 13 July 1871, Page 3

INTERESTING TO ALPINE ADVENTURERS.

Last Sunday week (says the Tirnaru "Herald") a man named Reddoff ifarted on an exploring expedition up lie glaciers of Mount Cook, and reached a part of the mountain, we believe, untrodden by man. Reddoff (more commonly known by the name of "Big Mike') holds a small run under the mountain, and has his homeitead about six miles from the foot of tho glaciers. He undertook his expedition for the purpose of looking for eome sheep that had been driven off by dogs, and were supposed to have gone on to the heights of the mountain. He tracked the sheep from glacier to glacier by their foot-tracks in the snow, and crossed the celebrated Ta?inan glacier, about three miles from which he came to a place called by ciplorers " The Gully," to a vast ice chasm, which few men, if indeed any, bave succeeded in crossing. The gully crossed, Mike went still onwards, his dogs being his only companions, and went boldly up the main spurs of Mount Cook. On the highest site possible for sheep to reach he found his missing lot, eleven in number, but in returning four were lost by falling orer precipices. For two nights Mike camped out upon the ice, one of which he was lying as it were under the shadow of Mount Cook's highest peak, which ascended upwards as a high mil of sollfl ice, unbroken save here and there by huge points of rock. The travelling in many places was so bad and risky that Reddoff had to take off his boots, and trust to his stockinged feet for a foothold. He returned home on the following Thursday, but his boots, which were nearly new at starting, were literally cut to pieces by the rough usage they had received on the journey.