ALPINE DISASTER ECHO.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17632, 8 December 1922, Page 6

ALPINE DISASTER ECHO.

MEMORIAL CAIRN BEING ERECTED ON MOUNT COOK. A letter received in Wellington from Mr Peter Graham, for many years chief guide at Mt. Cook Hermitage,; says that he is joining his brother Alec at the Franz Josef Glacier," on the West Coast side of the Southern Alps, which he hopes to develop as a climbing centre for the western slopes of the range as well as its other possibilities for the average holiday maker. Any old friends visiting the district should be able to spend a very enjoyable time. Mr Graham is now at work on behalf of guides and friends in erecting a memorial cairn to those who were lost on Mt. Cook, in 1914, and hopes to have it finished in a few days. Ho then goes on to Waiho to assist in the Christmas rush. The New Zealand Alps provide a largo number of very, difficult climbs, and Graham has undertaken, with others, the conquest of. the great majority of the virgin peaks. He was not a member of the party which met with disaster in 1914, but was one of tho party which went in search of them. On February 23rd, 1914, the English climber, Mr S. L. King, with Guides Thompson and Richmond, left, to climb Mount Cook from the Tasman side. They were seen two days later, and they were missing from that time on. Guide Graham and a search party set out, and the body of Guide Richmond was found, but no sign of the others. The party had been overwhelmed by an avalanche falling on to Lunda glacier from the top of a dividing range north of Dampier, and sweeping the valley for about a mile. This was the first fatal accident in the Southern Alps. Mr King was a member of the Alpine Club in London. Only a week or two previously he had accompanied another party over the eastern side and discovered a new pass 7000 feet high, known to-day as Terra Nova.