ALPINE CLIMBING.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 70, 22 March 1912, Page 7

ALPINE CLIMBING.

TRYING EXPERIENCES. ASCENT OF MOUNT SEFION. LBY TZUiGSAPH — SPECIAL TO TIIE POSX.^ CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. Mr. S. Turner, an Alpine climber, who has just spent a holiday amongst the .peaks of the Southern Alps, left last evening for Wellington. In recounting his exploits, Mr. Turner said that it was six years sinco he had made his first traverse of Mount Cook, and it was interesting to note that both the route up to the summit and the route down had been abandoned as being too long. An easy rock route had been found from the Hooker Glacier to the summit, representing a climb ot abont six hours. Last year, he continued, the season had been an extraordinarily good one, but this year there had been pu extraordinary bad. one. There were many spells of bad weather, with snow on th« high altitudes. At one time it was questionable if any climbing at all would be done* this year. Captain Head, Dr. Teichleman, and Messrs. - Chamberb and Weight had bcon through and returned without any results, worth mentioning, with tho exception of the ascent of Mount Cook by Messrs. Chambers and Wright by Green's route, which was climbed by Mr. Turner on a previous occasion. His own Mount Cook climb was one of two ascents made this year, and _he also ascended Mount Sefton, making the third ascent of that peak. The first was made seventeen years ago. Both his recent climbs were very interesting and somewhat dangerous on account -of the loose character of the snow and the changeable weather. As a matter' of fact, the weather was so bad that nobody expected that the party would be successful on Mount Sefton. On the Sunday when they were climbing that mountain they did not see any of it till twenty minutes before they reached the summit. All the time a sou-west gale was blowing. It was especially boisterous and ferocious when the party was on a knife-like ridge at the nead of th* glacier connecting v, high plateau of rocks with the actual pas* leading to the summit. The. ridge was between lft and 2ft wide, and was precipitous on both sides. There were really two ridges, and they were about 300 yds long. Tht> members of the party walked along them by digging their ice axes in the snow as mucn as possible and by stooping down towards the wind in order to prevent it from blowing them off the ridges. At that place a halt vyas called, and a discussion took place in regard to the 'serious risks that were being run. They decided to prese on and to see if the weather would become worse or improve. Fortunately the last slopes were reached soon after the discussion had been brought to an end. They went up a fairly large bergschrund, which practically cut off the summit from the main body of the mountain. Just after climbing up a steep place, a kind of ice ladder, using pieces of ice for hand grips, they had the satisfaction of seeing the clear summit. To reach the summit they had to Bbrmount a steep ice wall 40lt or 50ft high. The wind was very strong at the time, and they were careful to climb well away from the precipitous sides. In the circumstances it was impossible to stay on the summit for long. They remained there about twenty minutes taking photographs, and then descended and rested in a snowdrift hole between the summits, about 13ft deep. After that they went dowc the mountain the best way they could. They went from the summit' ridge down to the lower ridge, walking over the snawfields in three hours. In order to -reach the bivouac camp they had to do 4000 ft of precipitous climbing over scrub, snow grass, bush, and tussock, all covered with thick snow. They also had to climb up the steep bed of a stream. They had a very thrilling experience going down by Scott's Creek. It seemed ■from the bivouac to be all right, and was so for about three-quarters of the way down; after that they had 1500 ft of the most sensational boulder-climbing it was possible to imagine. One obstacle was a boulder that made a junction between two huge waterfall*. 'Precipitous, rocks on each side of the waterfalls made it almost impossible to get down that way. The party could see welcome flats dose to them, and tried to get down before dark. They lowered one another by the ropes off the boulders, sometimes into the stream, out of which they had to scramble.