Good Climbing

Dot English

(Sydney Bush Walker and the NZ Alpine Club)

The Bushwalker Annual1942

Today I received a most pleasant surprise – a red-borded cablegram from an Air-Force boy on the other side of the world. It said, "good climbing" and was signed "Birtle Esquilant." Anyone thinking to derive from those few words some hint of a proposed Mountaineering trip are due for a disappointment. "Good Climbing" is just a form of greeting among the Alpine club members similar to the bush walkers’ "Good Walking or "Good Camping" or the more common "Good Day!"

"Not much point in cabling that meaningless message from war stricken Europe," you might say, but for me it has provided a whole day of happy reminiscences. To-day is the anniversary of one of the greatest climbs we did in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. West Peak of Earnslaw is not so high as the minarets or Malte Brun (each 10,000 feet), or Mount Cook (12,000 feet), all of which we had climbed together the previous Christmas. West Peak is lower by 1,000 ft., but it has this incalculable charm about it, that it has seldom been climbed before. A dark cloud of mystery broods over it – secrets, stony, silent, inhabits its gloomy fastness – a realm where even conjecture may not enter.

Brilliant summer has passed; the air was sharpened with the faint sting of coming autumn – a time of turbulent wind and sudden rain – of falling leaves and ripening snow berries.

Below the Birley Glacier just about sundown we established a high bivvy among the gleaming snow grass. Close by was a dark rocky waterfall chasm which seem possessed by strange shrill voices – cold with and icy breath that made a red fire race in our veins and queued up all the millions of fine pulses in our bodies to the highest pitch of vibrant, singing life.

We heated up a ready mixed stew on a high-altitude primus and ate, snuggled up in our sleeping bags, while we watched and listened to the high cold wind which rushed ceaselessly out of the translucent blue darkness, bowing down the long silvery tussock grass till one thought of a dryad’s hair streaming down over the lovely curving slope in endless billowing ripples.

Tea over, we stowed away our things for the night, then lay on our backs, partly sheltered by the sturdy tussock clumps, enjoying the gusty tumult of wind as it poured down the slope, bearing a smell of icecaps and illimitable snow-fields. We looked up into the incredible height of blue, deeper that any ocean, where wisps of clouds swirled and streamed poured themselves in fine cascades from one blue interstellar space to another. Stars lay scattered – myriad golden points of light- and the moon was full. Birtle slept, breathing gently into the tussock grass. In the half state in between waking and sleeping I thought I was above that vast infinity of space looking down on it, and then it seemed as though "down, down forever I was falling through the solid framework of created things and must forever sink into the vast abyss"… and I, too, slept!

There is a quiver that runs through all nature a little while before dawn, when sleep vanishes. We awoke to see the whole hillside a-ripple under the fluid wind, and we listened to its thousand voices while we cooked our breakfast on a flaring grass fire.

And now we were away – up over the windy tussocks in the soft grey light before the dawn, more alive than all the living light, light as the wind itself, powerful as a storm, tireless as a turbulent glacier stream! Oh, the joy of living! – to feel the ice-axe cling on rock and ice! - to see the timeless miracle of dawn breaking on the mountain tops!

It took time proceeding up the Birley Glacier, which was considerably broken, but from the top we could look down into the Rees valley – a great space inhabited by moving air and billows of swirling mist. We were now in Wright Col, where the snow slopes makes a graceful curve and swell to the summit of East Peak. That was the first mountain I ever climbed in New Zealand, and though I have been up it several times since it will always remain a sight that catches the heart; that thrill and wonder of that first snow climb will never be forgotten.

Passing through Wright Col, suddenly we got our first glimpse of the great fluted wedge of rock, which is East Peak. There is rose, vast gloom at its base and vaster gloom surrounding its summit. How wonderful the loneliness was up there.

The desolate scree terraces on the west side of Earnslaw were crossed, then a long stretch of misty slipped by while we proceeded up a steep, ice crack of rotten rock which let to the high Col between East and West Peaks.

A short pitch up the hard, unsympathic ice slopes of the steep S.E. face, moving one at a time, and then we went together along the summit ridge, wind-weathered into two terraces, in a world all grey and white – the rocks grey, grey and more grey, till they were rather black that grey; and the snow grey, and less grey and not grey at all, but a gentle tone of white, robbed of its hardness. This is the place where time and eternity, earth and heaven meet. We adsorbed it in a vivid silent interval. On a mountaintop there is no need for speech the need of words – between the climbers there is a silent, comprehensive friendship beyond the need of words. They are conscious together of the subduing spell of silence, the sudden joy of new discoveries in mountain loveliness, the wonder and the beauty of it all – and that is enough.

And now all form and definition were quietly blotted out; a soft mist crept about us as we climbed down southwest of the summit to the col between West Peak and the first of the Seven Sisters. There they sat seven timeless ladies in a timeless row, and looming out of the sea mist was the grim black bulk of Pluto standing guard over them, his face stony and terrible, his fierce forbidding brows drawn together in a frown that boded ill for any paltry mortal who might think to show them disrespect. "Somewhat grisly." Murmured Birtle; "it will be pleasing to get back to our camp." And so was I thinking of lower levels – of the friendly where lots of little things – little ferns and berries and flowers – tiny gauze specks that flew and flitted above the banks of the singing stream – sunstarts on gleaming leave sand grass, and a gaysom little valley breeze marrying over the swaying clover.

On our mountain height the mist lifted somewhat, and gazing down, we saw a great, unfamiliar valley, deep dark and desolate, and wet from a fine driving rain.

"Oh Birtle, where are we?"

Concluding that this must be Pluto col and not Wright col as we had expected – the two places lay a whole valley’s width apart – we made all haste through it, relieved at being able to turn our backs on the rather frightening giant, Pluto. Skirting round the high rock terraces and snowfields at the valley’s head we reached the next col, which must be Wright Col, unless the mountain was bewitched, as indeed it seemed. We searched for our footmarks made in the morning ascent, and found traces so feint and dim that they seemed to vanish as we looked at them, and we could not be sure that they were not rather tracks made by a wandering deer stepping lightly on the hard surface of the snow.

We zigzagged up a snow slope, following the feint trail till it vanished on the hard ice, and there was nothing visible through the mist to tell us whether this was the col we sought or not. But it was so and gladly we strode down the Birley Glacier, and so to our bivvy site by the waterfall; thence down the springing tussocks and across the long shoulders of the hills to our little hut perched like an eagle’s eyrie on the tree-line, where the golden autumn forest and the snow grass met.

Night had stolen all detail from the hills when we finished our evening. The valley slept below and the snowy peaks above had silently withdrawn into the upper darkness. We stretched our selves comfortably in our Hessian bunks – a few desultory scraps of conservation – hazy fleeting visions of snow and rock and ice slopes – of a dark giant and seven princesses who sat together like god and goddesses in the kingly realm above – clothes in a blanket of mist –

all asleep …… asleep…… sleep ……….

then all consciousness melts away, and a great silence enwrapped us.

So it will always be. The memories of those early trips when we went hungry or thirsty, when the morning frost found the openings in our blankets and robbed us of much needed sleep, or when the rain came through, or under, the badly pitched tent, will always be with us as we come back for more.

And so it is, today, that when new members arrive, it is not the members friend that I look for, but rather the lone walker that comes in under his own steam, resolved that he will learn more of the game that so far has only given him hunger, thirst and fatigue.