Franz Josef guide has been a mentor for thousands

Press, 14 May 1982, Page 14

Franz Josef guide has been a mentor for thousands

By

NANCY CAWLEY

When Chief Guide Peter McCormack retires at the end of this year, he will have been cutting steps in the ice of the Franz Josef Glacier for guided parties .for 35 years.

As a friendly alpine entrepeneur with a deep knowledge of the area's natural history, he has been part of an unforgettable holiday for thousands of tourists. . A woman courier from Hawaii once told him, “You’re different. You made our day." And another overseas tourist wrote, . . .

“my wife and I greatly appreciate the skill, patience and consideration you exhibited yesterday, in assisting us to make it up and down the glacier.” Now approval has come through official channels. At the beginning of this year, Peter McCormack’s "services to New Zealand” were recognised in the New Year’s Honours List with a Queen’s Service Medal. (The two other Westland recipients of honours, Ruby Jones of Karoro and Malcolm Wallace of Haupiri, are his cousins.) Sitting back in a large leather chair in his livingroom, with his slippers on, making the most of a day off, Peter could be in any occupation, but the postcard view through the window and the mountain pictures on the wall give him away. The tanned face creases readily into a smile and the shrewd blue eyes are steady. He does not look his 59 years. ? On the glacier he moves with the ease that comes with complete familiarity, stopping to let his party look into the blue depths of crevasses and ice-caves,-point-ing out alpine plants growing on the glacial moraine, and explaining the geomorphology of the glacier. “I don’t believe in looking down my nose at tourists, or telling them a lot of bull. They’re

always full of questions, and I’ve taken the trouble to learn the answers.” Peter watches his clients’ safely without, he hopes, curbing their enjoyment. A European visitor once complimented him on “that beautiful freedom you gave us up' there today." ’ . Even today, living in an area as isolated as Franz Josef brings special problems, and for Peter and his wife Elizabeth, sending their two daughters to boardingschool in Christchurch had emotional and financial repercussions. Now they are glad they decided to stay put in one of the most beautiful parts of New Zealand. Although he has climbed many 3000-metre peaks and crossed many high passes, Peter McCormack has never pretended to be a high-climb-ing guide. Before' fire destroyed the original Franz Josef Hotel in 1954 it was owned by two brothers, Peter and Alex Graham, members of a notable South Westland family and moun- • taineering pioneers in the Southern Alps. Peter Graham told the young apprentice guide, “You won't be a highclimbing guide, but you'll be a wonderful glacier guide." Time has proved him right. Peter McCormack attributes much of his love of mountains to a veteran Christchurch mountaineer, Andy Anderson, an early schoolteacher at Franz. “I think I became interested in mountains the first time Andy took us out on a trip, and we missed a whole day of school on the Monday because of weather . . .” Peter McCormack was born at Franz Josef, a thirdgeneration West Coaster and proud of it. He enjoys looking back over the past, tracing his family. "My roots are deep in this area. My grandfather was the ferryman at the Waiho River mouth. He

married my grandmother at Okarito, and both he and my great-grandfather were goldminers." His mother, Katheren Wallace, was the first woman born at Waiho, “beside the air-strip, where the chopper pad is now.” As with many careers, Peter’s began as a temporary fill-in. He had just finished helping to clear the Copland Track during the big snowfall of 1945 when the chief guide, Harry Ayres, asked him to help out on the glacier trips — "just for three months over the sum-

mer season." He started offr cially two years later, and he has been doing the job ever since. He still remembers the excitement and pride of that first day, chipping uncertain steps with his ice-axe at the head of a long Line of tourists — a then record-breaking 72, with six guides in attendance. Nowadays, the numbers are smaller. The recession of the Franz Josef Glacier and the subsequent complications of access have caused a dwindling in patronage.

"Since I first stepped on to the glacier 50 years ago." says Peter, "it has gone back one and a half miles." The people of South Westland are well used to dealing with such things in their intractable environment. When nature runs amok they fight back, as they proved in midMarch. when severe flooding caused havoc in the area and wiped out two-thirds of the access road to the glacier.

But the big battle for the survival of the Franz Josef Glacier as a prime tourist attraction began three years ago. when Peter McCormack began lobbying for helicopter access to the ice. Now he can look back' with justifiable pride on a year of successful operation, with a five-seater Bell Ranger jet helicopter wafting sightseers to and from their half-hour walk on the glacier which starts at a height of 800 m, a joint venture between Peter’s employer. the Tourist Hotel Corporation and Mount Cook Air Services. In five minutes, tourists are flown to a point to which it would take them half a day to walk. Appropriately, the 12-bunk emergency shelter hut beside the helicopter’s landing platform, at the Luncheon Rock beside the glacier, has been named after Peter McCormack.

The average patrons of the "helihike" are middle-aged, and with tickets at $35 a head, usually fairly affluent. While Peter is confident that the popularity of these flights-of-a-lifetime will soon necessitate a larger helicopter, he sees the majority of tourists preferring to take the lower-altitude guided walk, at $8 a head, with himself or his assistant guides, Rangi Tinirau and his son, also Rangi. This last approach has become more taxing since the floods, but for many glacier-hunters this

is obviously just an additional challenge. Mlile plans for replacement of the access road proceed, each day groups of enthusiastic tourists walk to the glacier snout, via undamaged? sections of the road and a marked track in the Waiho riiwbed.

Peter is adamant that there is no rivalry between the Fox and - Franz tourist authorities. Perhaps there is friendly compettion, but a large poster on the wall of the Franz equipment room advertises the Fox Glacier walk — showing that there is co-operation too

Selling the-.mnuntains as a holiday area cdmes easily to Peter McCdrmack. "Start talking about snow and glaciers and you've got an audience,” he says. Promotional lecture tours"for T.H.C. have taken him to Australia and throughout . New Zealand. In 1973 he wak proud to receive the Newman Travel Award.

As a member of the Westland Park Board for 16 years, he is well acquainted with the contentious environmental issues of Westland. His pet hate is the concept of "wilderness areas." He sees them as a “lock-up."

“Parks are an opening-up. providing the tracks and huts that are so necessary with our unpredctable weather," he maintains. “Every few days, the rain makes the whole of Westland into a wilderness area anyway. Nature is looking after herself.”

With a 65-hectare farm and 50 breeding cows on the Tartare Flats, Peter does not anticipate a boring or inactive retirement. Will he miss guiding? “Well. I hope Mount Cook pilots will be able to find me a spare seat from time to time,” he says with a laugh.