DOG MOUNTAINEER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22596, 8 December 1936, Page 10

DOG MOUNTAINEER

15 YEARS ON EGMONT WELL-KNOWN ANIMAL'S DEATH [jlV TELEGRAPH—OWN CORRESPONDENT] NEW PLYMOUTH. Monday Death has ended the career of the guide'u dog Roy, well known to thousands of visitors to Mount Egmont. During his 15 years of life on tho mountain, ho saved the lives of at least three persons and saved others from many an oxhausting journey. Roy was a collie and acquired a vast knowledge of mountain lore. Snowfiolds and tho mist that drifts quickly down from tho spino of tho Razorback never puzzled him. Ho padded easily over tho hard blue ice, where even tho guides were roped together to cut slow and cautious steps upward. When blizzards swept up from the south, so thick and bitter that all sight of t(io world was blotted out, Roy waited patiently for his human friends and led them unerringly back to the bush track homo.

When all went well and tho weather was clear, Roy would follow tho steps of thrill seekers with contemptuously lolling tongue, but when human senso of direction failed neither cajoling nor threat could move Roy from what he knew to be tho way. Onco a blizzard of unusual intensity caught tho guide on the wild, high track between Tnhurangi Ridge and the plateau. The wind whipped the snow and obliterated every sign. Tho temperature fell so low that the guide know that if ho did not reach shelter before nightfall he would freeze to death. He know, too, that he was hopelessly lost, and that bis only chance was to follow Hoy. The dog padded steadily on. pausing only to wait when the halfblind, stumbling man dropped behind, in two hours tho adventurers were thawing out before a roaring log fire in the old house.

Years before this Roy guided two exhausted women to safety when they were lost on tho upper slopes in a great cloud of mist anil powder snow. He had followed climbing parties to the summit in every imaginable condition of weather and his pads were toughened to the needle-like ice. Ho would not submit to the servitude of a pack to carry his own provisions, but ho never resented short commons. Food was unimportant compared with tho joy of a brisk climb in tho frosty air.