"UP THE MOUNTAIN."

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 61, 12 March 1921, Page 17

"UP THE MOUNTAIN."

A DAY ON EGMONT. JAtTNT THAT'S WORTH WHILE. "WUat's he doing there," inquired the Elderly Passenger as lie took -is sea. in "the big touring car. "Filling tip the -radiator -with water," explained his more instructed -partner for the day*_ run. '"Well, well, bless tut soul. You don't tell mc. D'you know. I always thought these thing- ran on benzine. What do you t'n'nk of that now, water in the whisky, water in the ni'lk, even water in t'ue motor pn-rine?." It was explained to him that water was needed to cool the works, and then ■he volr_iteered the fairly obvious comment that this was Ms first motor drive. "Except once a year from the Xew Plymouth railway station to the racecourse, and "then I'm think ng too much of the winners I'm going to back to —nor, - much about the car. You see my circulation is bad (nice reminder for a newspaper man on a holiday and trying to forget such bread and butter affairs as telegrams, make-up, and circulation*., and I get cold if I drive. But I've lived on the coast for forty years now, and I've never been near — gmon't. I made up ray m'nJ to climb him this time, and t'ni_ seems the easiest way.' It was. As easily as pushing a baby over a cliff the car. loaded to the plimsoll mark, breasted 1 lie rise, flirted across four or five miles of tar-*calcd roads, black, but comely, and. leaving New Plymouth on her starboard counter, headed direct for Taranaki's pride —the most perfect of the world's great volcanic cones, Fujiyama not excepted. For ten nvles or so, on a fairly well-kept metalled road carrying a gradual rise, the car sped through open country, of verdant beauty even in this.midsummer. but giving no hint to the casual observer that it was worth up to and beyond a hundred pounds an acre, though some o»* this very land sold only last week at this surely extravagant price. Suburban home gave way, as the car swung along, to farmhouse of pretension and evident prosperity. A little further, and the pretension had gone, the steadings were built with an eye to use and economy, and reduced in size to the limits of family comfort. Still further on the way, and the outpost of settlement rushed across the kaleidoscope, cleared and well grassed land gave place to areas where the gnr.nt skeletons of what was once a mighty forest lifted their blackened limbs in protest to high heaven, while amid their fallen brethren, scorched and fire riven, the all-conquer-ing lush grasses borrowed strength from the ashes of the former lords of the soil. Shanty, one or two-roomed, sheltered the man witli his way to make, tending his scanty but ever-increasing herd, and roughim? it till his finance is found eno-gii for him to equal the camforts of lis fellows of the longer-settled areas. Gradually the lower slopes of the mountain iiad come into view. At the start of the run a grey cloud ma-s on the Southern horizon was the sole indication that rising .round lay in that direction: not a glimpse of the STWOft peak could he discerned, save a bit of a smudge low down wiiere rose the forest whVli ring- the mighty bill in a perfect circle from a few hundred feet above ,-.ea level to the line where forest diminishes into scrub and scrub ; runs out 'm too==. Later the i strengthening sun lifted the mists a i little, and something of the 'bear-tips of j the -lish-elad slopes could 'be seen. But I not all, for the jealous mists, layer upon layer, clung close to the swelling bosom of'the mountain, and gradually passing from transparency to translucency, finally completely covered the higher slopes and left the towering summit to memory and imagination.

Xot much of a day for a climb. thought t'ne two of the party who had serious designs: not wart- the energy involved when the range of vision was

limited to a stone's throw. '"No, it was not a day for the mountaineer; but this ! was the first attack, while one Tcmem-- ! bored that another party had left three ; davß before. After waiting vainly for i a fortnight for a mistless day on the 1 mountainside a momentary bait whi'e the party "shelled out"' a modest shilj ling, willingly farewelled when *'t was j explained that it went towards the fund ! for the up.keep of the park roads, and j then the gates were opened upon a drive lof marvellous beauty, winding serpentwise along the back of a spur, through vistas of magnificent unbroken bush, the road is truly one of ravishing beauty, 'not a theme for description: one whose splendour surges through to the very soul to be forever held as one of ' memory's greatest treasures. Stately rimu, every pendulous twig carrying a tear born of the mists, mighty rata and ■puriri, towering tawa and puketawa, ' rose bank on bank from beds of fairy fern, fragrant "honeysuckle, and creamy . broadleaf, 'blending into a virginal i dream of pure delight. ! Mile on mile the car sped on, and— "Doesn't this fellow know we want to go up t'ne mountain!" asked the Elderly Passenger.

"Sure he does; we are well on the way there now.'*

"No fear, vce are going downhill all the time," he persisted.

Well, we are a couple of thousand feet up a.'lready.

"Are we now!" Well I don't see how we can be -when we have been going downhill for the last half-hour."

Just then the car tapped a shoulder of the spur; momentarily the mist broke, and the EldeTly Passenger was shown the plain far below, while his mentor explained to him that he had been looking through the tilted windscreen, giving the illusion, combined with the ease with which the engine pulled its load, that the road was on the down grade.

A swerve to the right, down a slight dip, and the car drew up before t_e mountain house, 3200 ft above sea level, and 17 miles from Xew Plymouth. Ideally situated, substantially built, tastefully furnished and well ikept, the institution is one of which any tourist resort, even in a' much more populous community than Xew Zealand, might well be proud. The mist still brooded upon the landscape, but at this height it was tenuous enough to give some idea of the startling beauty of spur and bush, valley and plain.

i But the view was limited, and the I track with the legend "Up the Mountain" was an irresistible magnet. "The mist will clear all right,"' asseverated a denizen of the heights, so the pair decided to give it a spin. The car was | due to return five hours later. Four [_ours and a-_alf to the top and a_

hour and a half-down is cons'dered n_t bad going for the incompleat mounta.ineer, and these two were very incomplete. The returned soldier had done his mountaineering by aeroplane as an observer in Flanders; his companion had not been up a decent hill for a couple of years. '"You might get as far as Humphrey's Castle,"' suggested the motor-driver, naming a well-known landmark on the craggy mountainside,' "No chance of getting to the top to-day."

I Sir Humphrey's Castle was made the ( first objective and a way was made j through a bush track of heaven-sent | enchantment. The trees above the j mountain house have felt something of I the storm and stress of high living: .their tops have bent to the cold and I bitter winds, which rage there in the i winter time, and they have become more ( compact, but not less beautiful, than | the dwellers in the threshold. In regular progression they shorten down as the height increases, with every few yards the differences can be noted, till tree dimishes to shrub, shrub to bush, bush to mountain pine cowering upon the stones themselves, and running out in Alpine daisy gentian and lichen. Miracles of beauty have been performed in the bush by Nature's simplest weed, the moss. Robed from topmost twig to ground level in beautiful coats of green, grey and brown, the trees form glades incomparable, the pendulous masses softening every outline, filling every vista with a delicate charm, sweet as remembered kisses, bright as the dreams of youth. For a mile or more the track wanders upwards through scenes of ever-increasing magic, till the broadening light marks the limits of the timber and the mountain meadow clothes the slopes with a, vesture of brighter green. Something of the nature of the task ahead could now tie seen, though the kindly mists still veiled the full extent of the pilgrimage. Along saddle-back ridges, wide enough ' for a good foothold, but promising a

rough stumble for a wandering step, the well defined track beckoned on, the angle of ascent testing muscle and sinew at practically every stride, till, at the end of an hour's steady grind, a. seat upon the mountain's stony face was of a sufficient gratefulness. Up again, across a giant stairway of perhaps a thousand steps, where every stride was a distinct lift, and the track petered out into a multiplicity of routes, each climber taking the step that seemed to him immediately easiest, keeping on the right way through the kindly offices of a blaze of red paint upon the stones above, each In range of the next ahead, so that the guideiess climber has no chance of losing his way.

The giant stairway accomplished in a bath of perspiration, though the -wind

blew dark and chill, the weary wayfarers plodded on across the top of another spur, and then the mists, which had beeii gradually thinning down for some time, broke clea r , and away to the right gleamed the battlements of Humphrey's Castle, a sheer ridge of rock fantastically shaped, but crowned with tower and cornice to a decided resemblance to a stronghold of Hog and Magog.

The limit pet hy another had v-ecn reached, and the climbers set one of their own. High overhead the spowVnc. could he seen, and on this a new determination was set. It did not look so vefv far, twenty minutes away perhaps. It was- -an.l then some: distances on a mountain are as deceptive as a weather forecast. Rut the -mountain was now quite clear of mists, which formerly had followed in billow'ng masses upon the heels of the wayfarer, and there was some incentive to the

"Excelsior*' stunt. A scramble over a rocky ledge or two, then more toiling tin the boulder-sown li 111. an 1 the nltimntpeak rose into view. Only the height of a c;.jp,c o- Raugitotos awtv— *••> neiT and vet so far. for the -hour fixed as

the limit for the advance, and the heginn'ng of the retreat was ut band. Xcariy to tho snowline mow. anyway, and that mrst be reached. And then up near the sykline another party was sighted, straggled out. but still struggling on. There were ladies in the party, and that settled it. Investigation was necessary, and once again the upward march began. It looked fairly easy now, no ledges to negot : ate, no •boulder masses to circumnavigate, just a straight dusty brown slope cocked up at a sharp angle. More deceit. Every step up that 2000 ft or so from the mossline to the top was now won with toil and pain. For the slope was of the lightest of volcanic sinter, pumice in half-'nch cubes mostly, lying in the angle of repose, and down to the boot tops went the climber every stride, lifting forward two feet to make six inches progress, wearily dragging the leaden boot from one ashheap to p'.'t in down in another almost alongside, until real progress was despaired of. Hope of getting the car back was abandoned, a nigiit at the mountain house was : n

prospect, when gradually the adventurers overhauled the party ahead. They had started a couple of hours earlier, their ear was not running to timetable, but was awaiting their return, and they had room in it for the additional pair. Xow it was the top without quest'on. and again tiie plod began, while some of the overtaken party cried enough, beaten to a frazzle by t'ne grind through the cinders, and despairing of ever getting hack. After several years —it seemed as long as that anyway—of battling

through the loose rubble firm ground near iiie peak was under fool, and though ii invohed almost perpendicular climbing, it was an easy treat after t'ne scoria belt, and after stepping into the snow.'iel.l within the lower lip of the crater the final assault, over a coup> of hundred feet of rock climbing, was

accomplished. Over the last ridge the climb was made until the trig station, an affair of bottles which once contaned beer, marked tiie topmost height, S_ooft up, just alongside where one climber ambitious of immortality had written his name in letters of cement carried laboriously to the top to witness tiie vainglory of humank'nd.

A magnificent panorama lay spread below, mists still veiled tiie north and the undulating upper surfaces of a

mass of cirrus clor.d spread like a carpet of glory to the. limit of vision. Pat south, east and west Taranaki lay spread below, with its ordered fields, hamlets. fownsfCps and towns, combining to form a picture worthy of the climb, while iar to the smith the dim peaks of the Knikouras marked where the South Island lay. i'oming down; that's the j"v of mountaineering. All hour and a half was enough—live minutes took one over the scoria slope, toiled upwards in an hour. and then an easy jog brought the party along to the car, which spun along tiie 17 miles to New Plymouth in an hour, leaving one of the party at least so delighted with the trip that lo was back, from the Stratford end, three days later to try it again.