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By Marie B. Byles
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(Rucksack Club, Sydney
Bush Walkers, and H. H. Club)
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This was nominally a
mountaineering expedition in quest of virgin peaks, but such peaks
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shelter their wildness
behind a dense wall of almost impenetrable bush, and that is where
the
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bushwalking comes in. We
were simply calling for it when we chose one of the whitest parts of
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the map, the Tutoko
District, north of Milford Sound, and set forth to ink it in.
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Our jumping off place
was Homer, at the source of the Hollyford, which we followed to
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its mouth at Lake
McKerrow It is a forty mile tramp along a muddy, watery track,
roofed over
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by an exquisitely
beautiful forest, and carpeted, curtained and bordered by ferns,
moss and
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hanging plants. It is a
bushland whose beauty is born of the rain, and even the birds seem
to
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have learned their
lovely songs from the dripping of rain-drops We camped in rough huts
set in
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open clearings, where
the sandflies foregather by day and the mosquitoes by night. It was
all
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very beautiful, but the
thing that surprised me most about the Hollyford Track is that some
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people walk it, for
there was only one exciting incident in the whole forty miles was
when
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the wire cage over the
Pyke River got stuck above mid-stream with me in it
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I had come as far as
Lake McKerrow with Kurt Suter, the Swiss mountaineering guide I
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had engaged, a most
interesting man, who has followed a dozen or so different
professions
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since the time he was
born the son of a University professor to the days he hitchhiked
across
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Australia, lived as a
tramp, travelled with Wirth’s Circus as electrician, wheeled a fruit
barrow
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in Sydney, and finally
returned home to be welcomed as a famous Australian explorer!
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At Lake McKerrow we were
joined by Tom Cameron, who was to act as porter, and who
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had blazed a route for
us in advance up Stick-up Creek, a name ugly but apt, for the stream
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flows from the glaciers
of Mount Tutoko, down a steep narrow valley filled with the usual
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dense bush. However,
thanks to Tom, we had no difficulty in reaching the head of it in
one day;
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but it had rained all
the time; we were soaked to the skin and very glad to make camp at
the top
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of the gorge, where the
valley starts to flatten out (2,000 feet). we found a good, draughty
cave
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where a huge rock had
fallen on a tree to provide us with plenty of dry firewood, a most
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important consideration
on the West Coast where all wood is sodden and will not burn unless
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petted and coaxed.
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The rain continued two
and a half days more. We pitched the tent further up-stream
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where the forest partly
gave way to alpine meadow-land, snow-grass, spiky pineapple plants,
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tests snow-berries, and
the usual lovely alpine flowers, now nearly over. Tom went down to
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fetch up our remaining
provisions and returned with them, and Kurt and I climbed Slab
Lookout,
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as we called the top of
the slab slope, 2,700 feet above our camp. After climbing with Dot
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English and Dr. Dark in
the Warrumbungles I confess to feeling distinctly “windy” as I set
off
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with Kurt for those
smooth slabs sloping at a most unpleasant angle.. However, they
turned out
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to be not even distantly
related to the Warrumbungles in difficulty, for roping was
unnecessary, and I recalled the assertion often made that New
Zealanders prefer snow and ice and do not go in for rock-climbing as
understood in Europe or the Warrumbungles! Slab Look-out provided us
with a view of the surrounding country and also compass sights,
which proved useful in making a sketch-map afterwards.
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Then followed our one
and only perfect day in the Tutoko District and we made use of
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every atom of it from
the time the alarm rang—quite by mistake of course—at an hour
considerably
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earlier than that
suggested by Kurt! We went up by way of Slab Look-out and thence to
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the snowy mountain-mass
above it, several mountains joined in one. We named the two most
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prominent peaks,.
Paranui (large Snow) and Parariki (Small Snow). Between them was a
pass
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by which we hoped to
make our way over to Milford Sound on our return home. It looked
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down on to three lakes
which form the source of the river flowing into Harrison’s Cove on
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Milford Sound, a river
unknown, unmapped, untrodden. We called the pass, Toru Moans (the
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Pass of the Three Lakes)
and the river, Brunhilda, for reasons to be explained later.
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After shooting all the
surrounding landmarks with the prismatic compass we cut back
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over the snowy heights
to Halfway Peak and then along a ridge of rock and snow to the
mountain
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at the far end, Rotokiki
(Lake Seen), from which we looked down on the long silent depths
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of Lake McKerrow and
beyond it to the bronze-silver sea bordered by cloud islands gilded
by
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the early evening
sunlight.
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In the last of the
twilight we went back along the ridge and down the slab-slope, well
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satisfied to have
climbed over 6,000 feet in all, covered over 14 miles of country and
put four
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unclimbed peaks and one
pass in the rucksack. It had been an intensely interesting day
topographically,
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but the mountains were
scarcely as difficult as I had hoped.
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“A mere walk, in fact,”
I remarked rather airily as I swallowed one of Kurt’s excellent
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vegetarian stews with
the pemmican nicely disguised!
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“That’s all right,” he
replied drily, “but I noticed you managed to walk your finger-tips
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off.
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I looked at them
ruefully and had to admit I was a little less sure about its being
“a mere
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walk.”
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Our next objective was
Tutoko, the highest of the southern group of Alps in New Zealand,
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and a mountain not
climbed by very many.
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After that one fine day,
it rained as only the West Coast can. Wet day followed watery day
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and watery day followed
wet, Tom’s “Strand” and my “Punch” were exhausted and all Kurt’s
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cowboys killed off, and
still it rained.
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At last on the afternoon
of the 10th March it cleared; we climbed one more virgin peak,
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and decided on Tutoko
for the morrow, .the highest peak of the district and seldom
climbed.
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Once again the alarm was
set optimistically for an hour much earlier than Kurt anticipated!
It
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was a clear night when
it woke Tom and me-its “girlish chuckle” never woke Kurt—and by the
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time we had persuaded
him it was nearer sunrise than sunset, black cloud had gathered over
the
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fatal north west-which
proves conclusively of course that the weather would be all right if
only
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people got up when the
alarm went!
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I had only a few days
left and there were a great many more than a few possibilities of
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missing my boat to
Sydney by reason of swollen creeks. We decided to give up Tutoko and
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make over Toru Woana
Pass before the weather should stop us.
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So we struck camp, Tom
taking the gear down Stick-up Creek and back to Homer.
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