Handfuls of sandflies This is a deceptively simple book. It starts at Bainham right up in the northwestern corner of Golden Bay and makes straight for the Dragons Teeth, barely letting up until reaching the coast at Precipice Cove in Fiordland, by which time handfuls of sandflies are trapped between the tent outer and inner. |
This chord of soundI pointed to the only place that seemed to afford a perch, and insisted that we should stop on that spot whatever it was. As we neared it we found that our perch was a big tree jutting out from the precipice, on which we managed to find room, on its base. There was just enough room to lie down on the damp leaves, one ice-axe on each side, and the rope coiled under us. |
Taoka This is the first photograph of rock climbing in the Darrans I remember seeing. |
Chasm danglers On a single day last Easter, 3,300 people walked the Tongariro Crossing. My Facebook feed shows photographs of tourists shitting in the grass at the White Horse Hill campground at Mt Cook. Are there too many people on the mountains, or just not enough toilets? |
A very modest pioneerJack 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. |
Hemp ropes and oilskinsFor 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. |
It ended badly 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. |
Getting away from it all In 1989 I learned to ski. In communist Czechoslovakia. The irony inherent in that experience was hugely enjoyable. |
The great land heistBetween 1890 and 1920 the New Zealand government bought 4.2 million acres of Maori land, for which it paid around £3.5 million. In Buying the Land, Selling the Land, Richard Boast’s “study of Crown Maori land policy and practice”, he estimates that if the money had been divided equally, it would have provided each Māori individual with just £3 per year for each of those 30 years. In fact, he says, North Island Māori might as well have given their land to the Crown, for all the difference it would have made to their economic situation. |
Ironing out the wrinkles and strugglesTramping, according to Shaun Barnett, is ‘often rough, frequently wet, but regularly inspiring'. Non-trampers will probably be inclined to agree with the first two parts of that description, and it can sometimes seem that for trampers themselves enduring the privations of a trip into the hills brings as much satisfaction as the inspiration to be gained from the countryside. |
Problem climberIn 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. |
Display your enthusiasmAs climbers, we learn early in our pursuit of alpine sports that the rest of the world cares little for what goes on above the snowline – excepting, of course, the media storms that obscure our view of the mountains whenever tragedy or national tub-thumping are involved. |