“PRECIOUS JEWEL” IN HIGH PLACES

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32068, 16 August 1969, Page 4

“PRECIOUS JEWEL” IN HIGH PLACES

Mick Bowie. The Hermitage Years. By Nan Bowie. Reed. 196 pp. Illustrated. A biography of a well-loved Hermitage chief guide by his wife, this book is written with the modesty and restrained humour which characterise its subject. From’ 1929 Mick Bowie has lived and worked within sight of Mount Cook. He is still there to welcome old friends and companions, though since 1958 guiding responsibilities have devolved upon the Park Board.

Mick Bowie’s fine record as a climbing guide was built on judgment and prudence. The two most remarkable (and closely connected) facts recorded about him in this book are first that he never had a night out in the mountains and second that his longest climb ever (of La Perouse) was twenty hours. This argues exceptional ability in the planning of climbs, an instinct for weather and conditions, and unusual speed over difficult ground—his companions of course varied in ability and performance. In fact he seems to illustrate perfectly the old mountaineering dictum: “Speed is <>.safety.” That he was not <fften a pioneer of new routes is not

of great signflcance: the climbs that engaged him were the biggest and the extreme variation in conditions could well make them new climbs. Also, our ski-mountaineering, helped by such visitors as Colin Wyatt, was largely developed by Mick Bowie. It was an odd irony that one so prudent and responsible should so often have had to make prodigious efforts on behalf of the imprudent and the irresponsible or the unlucky. For rescue operations, together with packing stores to huts (or materials for building them) and all sorts of odd jobs between seasons fell to the lot of the Hermitage guides and made them need all their strong love of the mountains, the real motivation which kept them on the job. This book describes in some detail the construction of the huts in the Mount Cook area, a labour greatly lightened in recent years by air drops or lifts by ski-plane. Mrs Bowie’s wife’s-eye-view is studded with pleasant small anecdotes, from Miss Lorimer’s hairpin as incredible treasure trove on Earle’s route on Cook, to the occasion when Mick exhorted a tourist party on the Tasman Glacier to follow the guide closely because of the many danger-

ous waterholes: “Turning away he took a couple of steps half sideways and went into a waterhole up to his waist.” On three occasions Mick Bowie has been out of New Zealand, first in 1938 to take part in an expedition to peaks at the Chinese end of the great Central Asian mountain chains (where he discovered that Bowie in Chinese means “previous jewel”), then with the Second Echelon to Greece, Crete, North Africa, Syria (for the ski-ing, the other places for the shooting), and in 1961 to the Antarctic for a fortnight. In Britain his unit had had the pleasure of being lodged in a model pigstyle attached to a stately home inhabited by a solitary caretaker. His wound from North African operations fortunately did not prevent his return to the Hermitage after discharge. The historical value of this book is enhanced by the judicious assortment of photographs ancient and modern, 1 but the written history before 1929 is sometimes sketchy. One regrets too that no complete list of Mick Bowie’s climbs has been provided. The book reads very easily and will have a much widctf interest than the mountaineer ing public.