At Timaru (four hours by rail from Christchurch) we completed our stock of provisions, consisting of biscuits, tinned meats, &c., and took the evening train on to Fairlie Creek (forty miles further inland), where on arrival we hired a horse and buggy and drove to Ashwick Station, seven miles distant on the road to the mountains.
The next day’s journey took us over Burke’s Pass and into the Mackenzie country, past the beautiful Lake Tekapo, and on to the ferry situate at the southern end of Lake Pukaki.
The road itself winds through bleak tussock plains, interesting only from a geological point of view; but all monotony of the immediate surroundings is completely lost when one looks further afield and gazes on the marvellous beauty of such scenes as the Southern Alps from Lake Tekapo, or the Ben Ohau Range from the plains. Even the most fastidious globe-trotter could not fail to be deeply impressed with such a picture as Aorangi from Lake Pukaki.
To look at Aorangi from this approach is enough to damp the spirit of the stoutest Alpine climber that ever breathed, and is quite sufficient to account for the disbelief and incredulity cherished in the mind of many a shepherd in the Mackenzie country regarding the possibility of ascending the peak.
History repeats itself, and just as we hear of the native mountaineers of the Himalayas, Andes, and Caucasus discrediting ascents of glacier peaks around whose very bases they and their ancestors have lived and died, so we find that our own countrymen, whose calling needs their constant presence amongst their flocks on the lower ranges, refuse to believe that mountains presenting such an appearance as Aorangi are in any manner of way to be scaled.
The following day brought us to the Hermitage. A low mist had hidden the higher peaks throughout the day, and led to a surprise on the following morning which I little dreamt of.
I wonder if all Alpine climbers, in first ‘tasting the sweets of climbing,’ are similarly impressed with their initial Alpine view!
No words of mine can describe the ecstasy which seemed to pervade my whole being as on the early, cloudless morning the wonderful picture of Mount Sefton reared itself in indescribable sunlit grandeur above the old bush-clad moraine close by the Hermitage. Here, indeed, was a new and a fairy-like world to live in. As we sat in the verandah of the Hermitage the ice-seamed crags appeared to rise up and up until they culminated in a long serrated and corniced ridge, seeming almost to overhang the very spot where we rested.
A scene of mountain glory never to be forgotten, a memory to last a lifetime!