CLIMBING IN CHINA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23707, 14 January 1939, Page 22

CLIMBING IN CHINA

WOMEN MOUNTAINEERS’ EXPERIENCE

Three New Zealanders, including Miss Marjorie Edgar Jones (Timaru). are amongst the small party of mountaineers who are at present on a walking tour of China. The organiser of

the tour, Miss Marie Byles, a solicitor of Sydney, describing some of their experiences in the women’s supplement of the Sydney Morning Herald, tells how the party pitched their climbing bivvy on the snow, 17,000 feet high on the Oh-her glacier. She and Miss Edgar Jones made their first attempt on the peak, which they called Sabaloogor (the spelling being their own).

Both women are experienced mountaineers, but it took them an hour to climb up 100 feet and an hour and ahalf to climb down again. They were muffled up to the eyes in windproof Everest suits over many woollies, but it was so bitterly cold, that they both became worried about the possibility of frost-bite. The soft snow made It

impossible to find footholds or handholds on the rock. They were numb with cold when they dropped down to the glacier again, and realised that the peak would be impossible until next summer’s rains should have cleared the rocks of snow. It was a bitter disappointment, and the end of the hopes and plans of two years. Two days later some of the party climbed a peak above the middle camp and saw the Satseto Massif spread out around them with four main peaks. Looking at the knife edges of the rock and ice enfolded one with the other, they realised the icy inaccessibility of the peaks Later, they camped in the lovely

Pehshway Valley, where the snowcapped peaks* 8000 feet above them, reminded them of the beauty of the Rockies and the grandeur of Milford Track. From the valley they climbed through steep forest, and made camp 14,500 feet up in sheltered glade of tall spruce and low rhododendron. Before facing the problem of getting through the bombs over Kunming, Miss Byles and Miss Edgar Jones intended obtaining data for a sketch map of the mountain to assist other climbers. while other members of the party tried their luck at conquering the peak which had defied them earlier in the journey.