YESTERDAY AT MT. EGMONT

Taranaki Daily News, 5 August 1930, Page 11

YESTERDAY AT MT. EGMONT

SNOW, FOG AND MANY MEN. RESCUERS WELL ATTENDED TO. Anyone inclined to say that the present age is one of lack of self-sacrifice should have visited North Egmont'yesterday. It is true that the whole environment brooded in an atmosphere of tragedy, but there was more than a gleam of hope in the emphatic display of the selflessness of man and woman when the call came. Weather conditions could hardly have been more forbidding. Melting snow was making lakes on every side. Heavy fog drifted ceaselessly and menacingly over the hostels, and periodic rain squalls beat out a dirge on the roof iron. Yet car-load by car-load they came from all points of the compass and all over Taranaki, simply because there was need, for the sake of family and relatives, that a search should be made for somebody who had already passed into the eternal land of mist. And each one of them m'fist have known that there was quite a chance ho might pay for that quest with his own life. Away they went, search party after search party, .out into the deceptive fog that hides all things and especially tracks, out on to the treacherous ice on which a single slip spells destruction, and out into unfathomable bush, which is always waiting to claim a victim. And the rain drip, dripping ceaselessly. All for the sake of the love of a fellow being. In mentioning the rescuers one must not forget the unremitting labour of Mrs. Larsen who did not sleep for two days in ordei’ that hot drinks and refreshments should be always on hand for those who wanted them, Mrs. Taylor who so ably assisted her, Mr. Mrs. and Miss Nodder of the hostelry for their help, and the members of the Egmont Park Board and subsidiary committees* for their quick response to the call for organised relief. The p<- le of Taranaki should be particularly grateful to the young men who so often recently have not thought twice before leaving at a moment's, notice, often at dead of night, as members of relief and search parties when 1 someone has been lost on the mountain. The courage and unconquerable endeavour of the members of Mr. Lovell’s search party of Sunday night and Mr. Larsen’s rescue party that battled all day yesterday will pass into the proudest annals of Mount Egmont.