CLIMBING MOUNT ECMONT.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13929, 10 February 1914, Page 2

CLIMBING MOUNT ECMONT.

, fjijmogen*' writes in the "Dominion".:, Theie is no difficulty in reaching any <jf '■s& hostels which, have been erected on different sides of the mountain—Egnipnt, Dawspnj Falls, and Stratford —th© usual way of reaching them being to d)**ve either "by buggy or by motor car Ifrom New Plymouth, Inglewood, v Eltham, or Stratford, whichever town one chooses to start from. Once there a different world unfolds, itself, and one becomes steeped in beauty, lost in the dreaming silences that have taken the bush into their keeping for countless centuries, and have held their kingdom against all the fleeting creatures of a day. .

Between the pauses for breath and a rest, it was interesting to note the various* stages of growth upon the mountain side —first of all the thick, interlacing, moss-grown, curiouslysilent bush, which gradually decreased in height until it ended, and scrub began. After the scrub came the moss belt, starred, though rather sparsely, with mountain flowers—the buttercup, the violet (tiniest and daintiest of all mountain flowers), and gn&phalium, cousin to the edelweiss, the latter flower, strange to say, not growing there at all. There were -others, but .memory fails to recall them at the present moment. At the same time, Egmont does not give a wide variety of. mountain flowers such as are to be found on some of the other mountains. After the moss belt comes the scoria— a nightmare of horror, but the guide, in hie wisdom and mercifulness, made it as short as possible by cutting across at right angles, and getting upon the snow. The, remainder of the climb, 2,000 feet was made over the snow, sometimes loose and soft, into which one kicked footholds, and sometimes frozen hard where footsteps had to be cut. It was here that one learnt how deceptive distances can be, at any rate mountain distances. Slopes that looked comparatively short and near at hand stretched into apparently unending distances and, almost hypnotised by the snow (seen through goggled eyes) and the steady rhythm of the footsteps, one plodded doggedly onwards determined to do or fall down the mountain side, and dreamily wondering when the end would come. To reach the summit was to 'he compensated to the utmost limit for all the stress and toil of the climb. In between the great fleecy rolls and swathes of clouds that lay pile upon pile, one caught glimpses of the wide countryside outspread far below. Even as one eat watching and glimpsing through the rifts, the great mass of snowy vapour suddenly lifted and cleared and vieled in a delicate blue haze was to be seen practically the whole of the Taranaki province, with the far faint outlines of Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe descried against the horizon: So deeply ethereally blue was the bordering ocean with floating islands of snowy clouds passing and repassing that it was difficult to tell where it merged into sky and sky into ocean. It was

surely .the pathway that led to the> LanbVif-Beart*B Desire, the dreamland ,of all withjCeltifc blood in their vems," those unsatisfied.ones whose impossible visions haunt them throughout the days'of*.their life.

Quiescent for unknown centuries, its grim gashed sides covered with hieroglyphics that toTd of titanic fury, Eginont broods in lofty solitude over. the land it seems to guarcl, immovable, unyielding, defying life, defying nil things. One would ndt liko to have its. dreams broken, and it surely nnifit have been just snch a silence, just such a solitude, that Mr. W. B. Yeats ha<l in his mind when- ho wrote the startling line: —

"And God stands winding His lonely horn."

There are times when Emmont wakes from dreams, and wrapped in a shroud of impenetrable mist, takes heavy toll upon those who treat its power and aloofness with lightness.