Local Conditions, Guides, etc.
At Mount Cook there is an accommodation house, under Government control, and all charges are reasonable. The best guides are servants of the Government. Their services, however, may not always be available when most wanted, and a man will do better, if he can afford it and desires it, to bring with him his own guide.
The ideal party would be one of three first-rate amateurs, or two amateurs and a good guide, used to both rock and ice work. It would be practically independent of local assistance, and ready to seize all opportunities of fine weather to do first-class climbs or new expeditions. The local guides would willingly co-operate with or advise such a party regarding local conditions, weather, routes, etc.
The weather in New Zealand, as in all mountainous countries, plays an important part in such expeditions, and the climber of high peaks will be well advised to keep his eye on the dreaded north-wester, which sweeps across the Pacific Ocean and assails the beetling crags and snowy summits of the great range with a force and fury which it is difficult successfully to combat.
Our mountains, though not so high as those of the European Alps, are practically the same height from a mountaineering point of view, because in New Zealand the snowline is so much lower and the ranges rise directly from lower elevations than they do in Switzerland. Our alpine chain seems to be more heavily glaciated and the rocks more friable than is the case in Europe. Our glaciers are certainly larger, and the moraines upon and beside them such as to tax the patience if not the endurance of the climber unused to them. The scenery is grand from the purely alpine point of view, but one used to Swiss mountains will miss the well-formed road, the fine hotels and the high mountain hut, to say nothing of the mountain railway, which we must hope may never become the vogue in New Zealand.
On the west coast the scenery is more varied than on the east, because of the forest that clothes the lower Alps; but the weather is wetter, and the dense vegetation often a bar or at least a hindrance to the attainment of a high bivouac. The difficulty is accentuated when one has to carry one’s own tent and provisions on one’s own back, although there is not nowadays the same difficulty in obtaining porters which the pioneers had to put up with. Such huts as there are, are low down in the valleys; and if new ground is to be broken, the expedition should come provided with its own tents and sleeping-bags, and be prepared often to spend the night under the more or less friendly shelter of some detached rock. To the mountaineer, however, the dispensing with such luxuries will only add to the joy of his new climbs and tend to make him more fully appreciate the luxuries of civilization when, with his peak in his pocket, he returns again to the lower altitudes. From the technical point of view the climbing is very much like what it is in Switzerland; but the strange climber would always do well to remember that the dangers from avalanches and falling rocks are not so accurately mapped out as they are in ranges that have been climbed by several generations of experienced mountaineers.
While the new field will certainly prove fascinating from the climber’s point of view, it is also worth remembering that it abounds in objects of interest to the geologist, the botanist and the zoologist. The glaciers are among the largest and most interesting in the world; the flora is of the most diversified character; and the fauna, though limited, is curious.
Topography and Structure.
Large as the glacier system is at the present day, it is small as compared with the extent of the glaciers which descended far down the plains in the Pleistocene period. The greatest accumulation of ice and snow lies at the head of the Tasman and Murchison glaciers, on the eastern side of the main range of the Alps. The Mueller, the Hooker and the Godley glaciers, on the same side, are, however, likewise of large extent; while on the western side of the Mount Cook Range there are other glaciers of large size, one of which—the Franz Josef glacier—descends to within about 600 feet of the sea, and has beautiful tree-ferns, and a vegetation which appears almost semi-tropical, growing within a few yards of its terminal face.
One peculiar feature of the Southern Alps is the absence of any number of low sub-alpine passes over the main range. The principal low passes are the Haast Pass, leading from Lake Wanaka to the west coast; the Hurunui Pass, dividing the sources of the river of that name; and Arthur’s Pass, over 3000 feet high, across which the coach runs through the wonderful scenery of the Otira Gorge to Hokitika and Greymouth. The first point to be noticed in regard to the central chain is that it does not present an unbroken line of watershed, but rather a series of peaks and broken ridges, separated from each other by deep ravines, and for the most part not easy of access. The clue to this system of ravines and ridges is to be found in the fact that the Palæozoic rocks forming the main range have been at a very early period subjected to extensive pressure, the effect of which has been to crumple them up into huge folds, the upper portions of which have been removed, leaving the remaining portions of the strata standing up on edge, either in a vertical position or at very steep inclinations. The strike of the beds differs from the general direction of the dividing range by 33°. The rule which has been found to prevail in other mountain chains of similar formation appears also to hold good in the central chain—viz., that the greatest amount of denudation has taken place along the original ridges, which are now occupied by valleys, whilst the existing peaks and ridges are on the sites of former depressions.