In Mountain Ranges BOULDERS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21386, 31 January 1935, Page 6 (Supplement)

In Mountain Ranges BOULDERS

(By John Pascoe)

Canterbury children will be familiar with riverbed boulders. Every hillside creek leaps in play as it courses its way to its parent stream, and so to the sea. At the headwaters of the big rivers there is no lack of boulders, but it is not till a traveller is over the ranges in Westland that he sees man-size boulders. Moraine deposits shown as "gravels" on the map often assume giant proportions in reality. It is no exaggeration to say that some pebbles are 60 feet high and two surveyors in the Cook river districts have vouched for these record measurements: 113 feet high, 384 feet in circumference. During the journeys in the valleys, the riverbed tramp has become so necessary to any mountain trip that among the younger generation of climbers a new term has come into 'use, namely "boulder hopping." An entrance to a gorge in the Whitcombe river has been mapped as the Boulder Gateway. Carrying a swag in these places is heavy work. The wind is ill when it blows nor'-west,

but you can pitch some good camps in the shelter of house-sized boulders. When the rivers rise in flood and the storm is becoming worse a new note mingles with the roar of the waters. The boulders "clink-clink" as they are hurled downstream and crunched together by the muddy torrent. When the boulders begin rumbling in the main streams it is time to realise that a ford cannot safely be made. The debris of rock that accumulates on the ice of a glacier is called moraine. This chaos of angular rocks makes quick travel difficult. One mass of rock was measured by A. P. Harper and was found to be 156 feet high by 843 feet in circumference. This boulder would be an unpleasant obstacle with which to meet. It is just as well that such a size is the exception rather than "*"• rule.