City Climber’s Tale Of “Abominable Snow Dog”

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28894, 14 May 1959, Page 14

City Climber’s Tale Of “Abominable Snow Dog”

Other climbers have returned from the Himalayas with stories of abominable snowmen: Mr Albert Clough, a Christchurch schoolteacher, has come back from the mountains with a tale about an abominable snow dog.

It was while he was a member of a combined New Zealand-British-Indian expedition climbing in northern Iqdia about this time last year that Mr Clough came near to seeing a dog' where no dogs roam. He and Mr Alan Berry, now in the North Island, were pulling back to their base camp after an unsuccessful attempt on 21,000 ft Swarga Rohini (“Pathway to Heaven”) when Mr Berry called to him and asked him if he could hear a dog barking' They were in snow country, at 16,000 ft. He listened, but could hear nothing, he said yesterday, but later he did hear the barking. The weather was foul—they had been driven off the peak by a blizzard—and neither of them saw a dog.

Next morning they awoke at their base camp, at 13,000 ft, to see in the snow the imprints of dog’s paws, about two inches across. “But there aren’t any dogs up there—nor any wolves, either.” Mr Clough left Christchurch in 1954. ‘‘l got sick of being chucked off ships by dyspeptic sea captains when I wanted to work my passage, and finished up by paying my way.” He studied French in Paris by day and taught English in the evening, later obtaining a position as an assistant English teacher at Ecole Nationale Professionale in Amentieres. and after that at Lycee Jemson de Sailly in Paris —the biggest high school in France. While in Paris he was invited to join the Himalayan expedite which was led by Mr Jack Gibson, principal of the Mayu College, in India. Two of the Indians in the party were minor princes. Three times they failed to reach the summit—the third time after

one of their assault party fell ill when they were only an easy 600 ft walk from the sumtnit—and they finally had to withdraw and pack their own supplies out when their 40 porters deserted them. “They got the idea that if the sahibs, who were trying so hard, were unable to bring it off, the gods must be angry,” he said. “So they got ‘sacred-mountain-itis* and cleared out. We were blackballed in every village for miles around, and couldn’t hire a porter at any price.” His French wife, Marie-Andree, whom he married in Paris, climbed to the base camp with Mr Berry’s wife .and they later returned to await their husbands in Dehra Dun.

Mr Clough taught for six months at the Mayu College, and later he and Mrs Clough returned to New Zealand. They are now staying with his mother, Mrs M. G. Clough, in Thorneycroft street, Fendalton.