ALPINE CLIMBING

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 137, 6 December 1935, Page 7

ALPINE CLIMBING

ENGLISH EXPERT

VISIT TO DOMINION

ATTEMPT ON MT. DAMPIER

"Achtung, Immer Achtung"—Caution, always caution." This is the advice that Mr. H. E. L. Porter, of Sutton Courtney, Berkshire, a prominent English and Continental alpine climber, gives to followers of the sport in New Zealand. On his seventh visit to the Dominion, Mr. Porter arrived from London yesterday by the Tamaroa. Before, he sailed on his third trip to New Zealand Mr. Porter was asked by Captain Farrar, the then, president of the English Alpine Club, to broadcast this German slogan to young New Zealand mountaineers. This he did, and again on his seventh visit he reiterates it. "It is the best advice you can give an inexperienced mountaineer," he told a "Post" reporter. Mr. Porter considers that the Southern Alps are among the finest playgrounds of their kind in the worlds "I come back again and again to the Southern Alps," he said, "partly because I am married to a New Zealander and partly because I love your mountains. For ice and snow they are quite unrivalled. There are still two or three mountains I want to climb. Among them are Mount Dampier and Mount La Perouse. I have climbed Mount Cook twice, and all the other mountains in the vicinity of this peak. Mount Dampier, however, presents a great problem; it has only been climbed once. It is my special aim to climb it during this trip." MORE DEVOTEES. Alpine climbing, continued Mr. Porter, had spread extensively in New Zealand during the last few years. When he first visited the country in 1923 there were only a score or more of climbers. Today he was gratified to know there were literally hundreds. In England and Scotland, also, the number of mountaineers had increased considerably. He regretted, however, that there was a tendency among alpine climbers to "mechanise" mountaineering. By this he meant that formidable precipices were climbed by; driving pitons and stakes into the ice.' He was pleased to say that this practice had not yet been adopted in England. "We don't like it at all," he added. ■...:. Mr. Porter referred to the recent expedition to Mount Everest. Just before he left London, he said, he met Mr. Sbipton,' the* leader of the reconnaissance party, and Mr. Shipton paid a tribute to Mr. Bryant, the New Zealand member of the party. Mr. Bryant, said Mr. Porter, was very highly, thought of by members of the party* • If on this occasion the reconnaissance party had been the official party to attack Mount Everest, said Mr. Poster, they might have reached the summit. At the time the party made the ascent conditions were favourable. The monsoon was much later this year, and the party would have had at least an extra fortnight in which to tackle the mountain. Mr. Porter paid a glowing tribute t« Mr. Bryant for his double traverse of the Matterhorn in one day. Mr. Bryant's time of sixteen hours for the double journey was remarkable, and it was all the more so because he went ■with a companion he had never seen before. Many single traverses of the Matterhorn took sixteen hours. Mr. Porter has had thirty years' ex- • perience of alpine climbing, and he is a member of Swiss, French, Italian, English, and New Zealand Alpine Clubs. "I hope to go on for another ten years," he said. "It is impossible to explain the fascination of alpine climbing unless it is that I know of nothing more satisfying than reaching the top of a mountain that has offered real resistance."