(header photographs by Harry Waite 1912-2011)

The Myth of the Sacred Brumby

 

 

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To The High Hills.

by Dot. English.

(The Sydney Bush Walkers and the N.Z. Alpine club.)

There are recreations and recreations. For myself, I would rather walk. I went horse-riding last week-end. Next time I shall walk-you can't beat walking as an exercise. For nights I have tossed and turned in bed and groaned in spirit. Instead of drugging my insomnia by counting sheep, I recount the name of every individual muscle in my body and ascertain whether it is stiff and sore. It is! No thanks; keep your horse. I'd rather walk !

Now bushwalking, the summer bonum of all sports in Australia, becomes mountaineering in New Zealand for the simple reason that, to make any headway in the dense, waterlogged forests, you would need a road gang armed with axes, spades, and mattocks, and backed up by a bulldozer and a steam-roller or two, and that, to anyone other than an alderman, is clearly impracticable. But on the mountains you have clear going, even though it be nearer the vertical than the horizontal, and the despised vegetable dies before it is born rather than contend with the unsympathetic, icy vastness of a superior world.

Speaking of mountains brings me to my subject-Malte Brun, the object of our aspirations last Easter. The name "Malte Brun," while it conveys practically nothing to a stranger, save, perhaps, a nebulous groping into his elementary French grammar days, to the New Zealand climber conjures up a vision of over 10,000 feet of clean, red, reliable rock, the best of all God's stones. The fact that Malte is situated in the Mount Cook district and thus consorts with the proud, snowy aristocracy of Sefton, Tasman, Dampier, The Minarets, and even Cook itself, decided us to spend our holiday in real climbers' country.

Leaving Dunedin by car on the Thursday evening, our party of three traveled Mount Cook-wards all through the night. There was a brief respite of four hours when we crawled into our eiderdown bags and refreshed the body with sleep on a pile of boulders by the roadside-actually the best camp-site offering, as the whole plain for miles around was a fair representation of the Gibber Desert.

First light saw us on our way again. Mount Cook Hermitage welcomed us for breakfast, after which, loaded down to Plimsoll mark, we set out on the twenty-mile plug up the heaped moraine rocks and hummocky ice of Tasman Glacier to De la Beche Hut, which was to be our headquarters for the next couple of days. The hut reached, dinner disposed of, and the alarm-clock set in anticipation of a big day on the morrow, we rolled into our bunks by 9 p.m., and vacated them at 3 o'clock next morning after a terrible mental struggle. Soon we were sleep-walking over the half-mile or so of wrinkled epidermis of the Tasman Glacier, which flowed like a river of ice between De ]a Beche Hut and the foot of our "Hearts' Desire."

Uncertain weather conditions caused us to dilly-dally for some time at the foot of Malte Brun, but eventually we decided that we would be doing something profitable if we did a spot of reconnoitring, even if unable to climb that day. So we plodded upwards aver tumbled rocks to the Malte Brun Glacier, from which vantage point we gazed long and lovingly at our peak, till, fired by the undeniable truth of the saying, "Familiarity breeds Attempt," we decided to make for the summit As if just waiting for this vote of confidence, Heaven now smiled on us ; the clouds cleared away, and a perfect day shone forth.

We skirted a yawning gap in the glacier ice and bent our minds and our muscles in an attempt on the steep-walled N.E. face of the western arrete, which my experienced eye judged to be as good as perpendicular. An inexperienced clinometer might have made a more moderate estimate. But, my dear readers of conventional fiction, do not imagine that the inevitable choice of a climber always rests

between an unscaleable precipice and a bottomless crevasse ; some~ times there is a middle way, and on this occasion we were lucky enough to find one which led us to the skyline ridge. Of course, it was not as easy as that-it took about eight hours in all, which, like the laying of an egg (on the 40-hour a week estimate), is a whole day's work for a hen.

For another two hours we clambered over the mountain's knobbly back-bone, part of its length including the famous Cheval Ridge, so steep on either side that if you had to fall you wouldn't bother to make a choice either way.

It has been said by second-rate climbers that there are only two joys in mountaineering-one when you reach the top, and one when you reach the bottom. Well, we certainly enjoyed ourselves-but we did not reach the top ; 3.30 p.m. found us still 400 feet from our goal. The heights were enveloped by a heavy mist, which thinned occasionally, revealing the summit rocks well plastered with snow, thus making quite dangerous climbing. We decided, in view of the lateness of the hour, to retreat while daylight was still with us. After all, the idea in climbing is not necessarily to get to the top of a mountain, but to enjoy life (and I say "life" advisedly), as far as you go.

The Descent

We retraced our steps along the switchback ridge till it appeared to end in an impossible drop, then transferred our attention to a steep, dark couliour which, in our happy ignorance, seemed the less of two evils. It could have been called either a frozen watercourse hung on the face of the mountain, or an avalanche chute, being both. Darkness overtook us before we had fairly started the descent, and for five solid hours we belayed ourselves every foot of the way down the sort of dark, loose, slippery corridor that you wouldn't look at twice in daylight, except to say "impossible!" As the hours vanished into the dark void of night, this concentrated progression became so mechanical that we did it unconsciously.

Just to relieve the monotony, the mountain found occasion, at irregular intervals, to launch portions of the hillside o-1 to our heads. But what though the going was dark and difficult ! Somehow we at last found ourselves at the top of a steep snowfield into which our crampons would grip. The full splendour of an Easter moon lit up the expanse of white with a radiance not of this world, and the strain relaxed.

After a little scouting about, we picked up our tracks of the day before. Then it was just a downhill trot all the way, and at 4 a.m. we lumbered into Malte Brun Hut as the foot of the mountain. Here we refueled with two tins of iced apricots, as we hadn't eaten since the previous afternoon, and then it had only been half a bun each and a piece of chocolate. The apricots more than fortified us ; they kept continually reminding us of their presence as we crossed the Tasman Glacier to our own little hut at De la Beche.

Dawn saw three small figures moving slowly up the high moraine rocks till they gained the hut. The sun rose above the eastern bar and shouted, "Hullo! Hullo!" to a waking world, but we tumbled into our sleeping-bags and let him shout. And all day long he called and called, but we lay fast asleep; aye, all the day, because our need was deep. After our own fashion, though, we had enjoyed ourselves.