growing wild

Summits and Shadows: Jack Clarke and New Zealand Mountaineering, by Graham Langton

Jack Clarke remains a distant, even difficult figure through most of Graham Langton’s account of his life. This is the man who, at the age of 19, in his second year of climbing, joined the first climb of Aoraki Mt Cook. Who joined the first climb of Tasman the next year, and also Silberhorn and Haidinger, and who later made first ascents of Darwin, Annan, Hamilton, D’Archaic, Malcolm, Tyndall, Nicholson, Edward and Aspiring. Who climbed four new routes on Aoraki. Who became New Zealand’s first proper mountain guide and made a career out of it.

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Mountaineering from the Milford Road: an illustrated history of the first mountaineering in the Milford region, 1895 to 1970, by Gerard Hall-Jones

For many climbers, history in the Darrans probably begins in 1968, when Harold Jacobs and Murray Jones climbed the north buttress of Sabre. This book will correct that misapprehension: with one or two incongruous exceptions, the entire era of high-standard alpine rock climbing which that route inaugurated is ignored.

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Pushing His Luck: Report of the Expedition and Death of Henry Whitcombe, by Jakob Lauper; a new translation and commentary by Hilary Low

The cover of Pushing His Luck shows a black and white photograph of Whitcombe Pass. The mountains on each side are dark and fractured, although the pass itself is bare, open country and hardly difficult travel. But beyond, to the west, the ground drops away sharply, the sky lightens, and there is sunshine on low clouds in the distance that seem to promise an escape from the bleakly inhospitable high country.
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Where the Mountains Throw Their Dice by Paul Hersey

In the wake of Ed Hillary’s death, when the simple and unalloyed pleasures of mountain climbing were celebrated as the nation idealised a simple and straightforward approach to adventure, competitiveness and enjoyment of life, Paul Hersey’s wide-ranging and readable book struck a very different tone.

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Each spring, the sun’s return teased the dark rough rock and moistened the snow, causing tiny rivulets of clear water to spread across the fractured faces of the peaks – and as its beguiling heat roused the winds that circle the southern edge of the world, they roared and brawled among the tenebrous mountains, a cogent song that called towering banks of cloud from the western ocean to drench the drab ground with the sweaty energy of life. (more…)

‘It’s like a giant crystal!’

Parish Robbins came from California. Creases formed on his brow as he looked intently down by his feet. Nylon billowed around his wiry frame. He stood on the ice scoured slabs above Black Lake, expounding on the likely age of the lichen surrounding him.

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In the Siberian Altai

‘Berlin is a shitty town.’ Jo’s remark, waking us from contemplation, reminds us of what we’ve really been talking about as plans have grown for trips to Ecuador, Irian Jaya, Kamchatka. (more…)

The Donne face of Tutoko
I feel so high, I even touch the sky
Above the falling rain
I feel so good, in my neighbourhood
So here I come again… (more…)