N.Z. MOUNTAINS

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 98, 27 April 1935, Page 11

N.Z. MOUNTAINS

"HEAVENLY GRANDEUR"

VISITOR'S IMPRESSIONS

"New Zealand mountains were all and more than all I had dreamed about them through years of exile in a mountainless land, both on account of their positively diabolic weather and their heavenly wonder and grandeur on the few occasions the sun does shine. And I have returned to Australia feeling more than ever, that New Zealand mountains are all the more irresistible to the climber simply because their weather is so bad and their access so difficult. It makes climbing worth while when you have to fight for your mountain peak." This is the opinion of, Miss Marie B. Byles, of Sydney, who is regarded as an authority on . travel and who has written in "The Tararua Tramper" her impressions of a trip to the Mahitahi River and the Zora Glacier. "And I have also returned feeling more envious than ever of the overwhelming abundance of mountains in your tiny land. Don't you think you might spare one or two little peaks and put them on the top of our Kosciusko Plateau, so that Australia might have at any rate one snow-clad, mountain peak?" asked Miss Byles. "Ever since I returned to Australia in 1929," she wrote, "I have been planning the next visit to New Zealand, a visit that should take me into the heart of unclimbed mountains whose snows could be guaranteed unsullied by the foot of any previous mountaineer. The mountains at the head of the Mahitahi Rivei', on the West Coast, fitted the bill exactly, Guide Frank Alack assured me, and towards them we accordingly went, accompanied by Marjorie Edgar-Jones, whose reputation as one of New Zealand's premier climbers is so widely known. "We took horses as far as possible up the Mahitahi River, and after that packed up On foot. There was a great deal of 'bush walking'—too much for my liking, although it is a wonderfully beautiful bush, but we can get bush walking in New South Wales. We cannot get mountaineering there. - "However, it is impossible to go exploring in New Zealand without the necessary preliminary of bush, and it made the mountain peaks all the more wonderful when we reached them. In the upshot we thoroughly explored the country at the source of the Mahitahi River and the Zora Glacier and found many errors in - the map, the chief being the course of the Mahitahi River at its source, for the river rises right at the Mueller Pass and flows in practically a straight course as far as its junction with; the Edison. We climbed seven peaks' in the district, five w,ere previously unclimbed, and the two others, one of which was Mount Fettes, would also have been unclimbed had not another party come up from the other side two days previously and bagged them first. "Our best virgin peak was Mount Strachan (8359 feet), and we were fortunate enough to climb it on the one perfect day, so that it gave us a peerless view of the vast mass, of the' New Zealand Alps rising up range upon range until they culminated in the king peak of Mount Cook.' "For the 'rest, that is, about threequarters of our time, we lay in either the base camp or the climbing bivvy, and listened to the rain sheeting up the valley, while we thanked our lucky stars we were in a cave and not in the alpine tent which I had specially made in > Sydney, and^r which was guaranteed waterproof, >but which, like all other guaranteed waterproof things, I feel certain would not keep out West Coast rain." . ■ '