MOUNTAINEERING

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18554, 29 April 1930, Page 5

MOUNTAINEERING

A RECREATION FOR STATESMEN. (Contributed.) “ It was a very good climb.” §aid Mr F. J. Rolleston, who. at the end of i last week, accompanied by Guides j Williams and Bowie, made the ascent of the Footstool (9073 ft.) in the Mount I Cook region. Although the snow was soft in patches, the weather was good and the climb was made in nine and a half hours. During the Easter holidays visitors at the Hermitage were startled to see late one night a party of weary mountaineers, including the Kon. H. Atmore. walk in. The party had crossed Graham’s Saddle from the West. Coast, and was going back via Copeland Pass. The Rt. Hon. L. S. Amery is a statesman whose chief recreation lies in the climbing of high mountains. Why do these men of affairs struggle up peaks in their brief times of holiday? To the uninitiated climbing seems a poor kind of sport. If you go out with the others you can slip and they can hold you on the rope. If two of you slip, you probably pull the third and that’s that. “Anyway it’s a clean death,” says the mountaineer. “Yes, but 'Why court death at all?” says the man of earth. As life gets more complicated we become less and less aw r are of the simple sensations which guide the life of the snimal. The delight we take in smelling a rose shows how small a part scent plays in our work-a-day life. We are so muffled with clothes that we rarely feel the crisp air.on our bodies. The hat pulled close over our eyes cramps our vision and dulls our hearing. We rarely discover things for ourselves. Someone tells us or we read it in the paper. In the Alps life depends on sharpness of perception, on quick judgment, and on unfaltering determination. The climber goes out before dawn. He sees the first light on the snow, feels the crunch of the ice under his feet, and the sharp clear air on his skin. Ho becomes something more than a mind propelled round by a body. He feels a vital thing tingling with his sensitiveness to all his surroundings. Far below where the habitation of men jostle each other for room the calls of our attention are so many that it seems an impossibility to give ourselves whole-heartedly to any one thing. Mountaineering makes life for the moment simpler. There is only one goal—the summit. When that is reached, and a safe return made, then the scheme is fulfilled and absolutely. No one tries to climb a peak gracefully or quickly. One just climbs it Sometimes agonisingly tired or dieadfully afraid. That doesn’t matter. He returns to the hut weary. He says casually “Yes, we got it—a great day!” and then sleep, and ever afterwards that day stands out as one of the few when one has accomplished what he set out to do. No wonder statesmen seek the high places of the earth.