MOUNT DAMPIER CLIMBED

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22310, 26 January 1938, Page 10

MOUNT DAMPIER CLIMBED

—♦ •

Second Ascent Of

Great Peak

ARDUOUS TRAVERSE OF

THIRTY-TWO HOURS

The summit of New Zealand's third highest peak, Mount Dampier (11,287 feet), was reached for the second time when a successful ascent was made last week by Miss M. Edgar Jones and Guides Jack Cox and Syd. Brookes, of the Hermitage. The first ascent of Mount Dampier was made 24 years ago by Miss Freda du Faur and Guides Peter Graham and Charlie Milne, and several attempts which have been made or planned since then, most of which have been in the last four years, have been defeated by weather, bad conditions, or lack of time.

Miss Jones's party made the first traverse of the mountain, the ascent being made by a new route and the descent including a traverse of St. David's Dome. It was an arduous climb, the party being on the move continuously for 32 hours, with the exception of a period of about three hours during which the climbers, roped to a narrow,-sloping shelf on the face of the Dome, wailed for the rising of the moon to enable them to continue their climb with the help of its pale light. Difficult Descent Miss Jones and her two guides left the Haasl Hut at 2 a.m. on Wednesday, found good travelling through the Linda Glacier by moonlight, and left the snow fairly early in the morning to make a route up steep but firm rocks which carried (hem directly to the summit of Dampier at 10.30 a.m. They had left the Linda several hundred feet below Green's Saddle, which separates Dampier and the Main Divide from Mount Cook. The rocks had necessitated careful climbing, but the party described them as "not over difficult" and, in fact, they proved to be the easiest section of the climb. From the summit a route was planned leading down snowed-in rocks to a snow ridge and the arete leading to St. David's Dome. The rocks from the summit were firm and easily descended, but frozen snow at an acute angle delayed the climbers. Worse was yet to come, however. The ridge between the two peaks was guarded bv p series of gendarmes of loose, -labby schist, and the first of these ;«!one took an hour to turn. The summit of the dome was not reached until :; p.m.. and the climbers had still to face the prospect of a descent of snow u,d steep, loose rock to Harper's Saddle, and the broken Hooker Glacier t'> Gardiner Hut.

Waiting for the Moon

Halfway down they were climbing in darkness. Until 11 p.m. they carried on, feeling their way irom one steep pitch to another. The night was fine, but a cold wind meant discomfort. They were forced at last to make what use was possible of a narrow sloping shelf in the face of the dome above La Perouse Glacier, and spent three hours endeavouring to rest, roped for safety to projecting rocks above their impromptu bivouac. At 2 a.m. on Thursday the moon came oyer the divide and they were able to move again. Daylight found them off the rocks and cutting steps down to Harper's Saddle in frozen snow. More step cutting down hard grey ice took thorn into the upper Hooker Glacier valley, and at 10 a.m. they reached the Gardiner Hut. Tkey rested there for the remainder of the day and that night, and on Friday reached the Hermitage. Guide Cox. who has now almost completed the ascent ot the series of 10.000 ft peaks in the Southern Alps, described the climb as long. hard, and difficult. Miss Jones had previously this season climbed the Minarets. Mount de la Beche, and the Footstool, and she has also almost completed the round of the high peaks. The ascent of Mount Dampier was the fulfilment of plans made years ago and defeated in other seasons by adverse conditions.