OLD ROAD TO HERMITAGE

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28598, 29 May 1958, Page 18

OLD ROAD TO HERMITAGE

The road was rugged, but the scenery glorious, when Will Lawson described the trip to the Hermitage in 1919 in his brochure, .“Mount Cook and the Grand Motor Tour.”

. “Alter leaving Fairlie, the first of a wonderful series of views occurs at Burke’s Pass., when the beautiful country betweeb Fairlie and that point has been traversed. Burke's Pass opens upon the Mackenzie plains. But there is no indication of this as the pass is being climbed; Ohly when it is topped is the wonder of the thing made clear. : ':■

“There are sunlit yellow and brown hills stretching away from left and right into the distance beyond the plains, and to a wider left and right, with- great groups in the middle distance. Along these lulls move the shadows of clouds, and above the furthest hills a long line of misty cloud clings and hides the mountains of the Alps.

"Through a gap in the hills a glimpse of Mount Cook is often had: and if the mists hide it, there are compensations in the hills.

"Such wonderful tints and colours. From some a veil of mist is lust lifting, and there is one chain of them whose colouring and softness almost baffles description. “The road settles down to make a swift'way to another ridge, and presently the crest of Mount Cook shows for a little space above the misty clouds. So high in the heavens are the gleaming peaks, and so cloudlike, it seems impossible that they belong to earth —yet so distinct that there is no room for doubting. ...”

Tekapo: “a still, wide lake . . .1 its waters are a delicate turquoise] blue, unbroken by shadows of I cloud or of wind. . . , : . 1 Pukaki: "another show lake . . . 1 its head is right against The bases of the Snow Kings, and the roaring Tasman river from Tasman Glacier feeds it.” “Across, or rather over the length of Pukaki, like castles in the skies that appear; to wear white clouds on their . turrets. Mount Cook and the other Snow Kings stand, bold and .inspiring. The white clouds of Mount Cook are its white peaks.” On from Pukaki. “distances arid heights are misleading . . . twenty miles is as a moment, a thousand feet a circumstance. “At last, when the wilderness of the heights, ice-bound on the upper slopes and black on the lower ones, becomes almost a thrriat,. the red roof of the hermitage shows. “It stands on a small plateau, nearly at the southern end of the Cook Range, where it runs down to man-level, from the clouds. On the right is the Tasman Valley, on the left the Hooker, with the Cook Range between. “From each valley branch off

steep gullies and icefalls and glaciers and immense moraines—broken rock and ice of a mass and chaos appalling. “But there is nothing threatening in the prospect as seen from the terrace in front of the Hermitage. Everything, one can reasonably- desire is here. In fact, there is something almost incongruous and quite strange to sit in the well-appointed, wellfilled dining room, with the gaslamps lighted, and look out at the enormous masses of the mountains, which seem so close—Cook still with the after-glow ablaze on its peaks. “It is so unlike anything that is seen in the usual round of life, and the giants, with heads held high among the stars, look monstrous in the grey light. But it is wholly splendid. “And, at night, to be in bed, looking out at the snows of treacherous Sefton and to hear the avalanches thundering, roaring down the slopes, is an experience so new. so unexpected.”