Over the rainbow
In this extract from their new book First Crossings, New Zealand adventurers Kevin Biggar and Jamie Fitzgerald follow in the footsteps of Edmund Hillary’s 1944 solo ascent of Mt Tapuaeo-Uenuku.
AS THE kea flies, Tapuae-oUenuku isn’t that far from the Wairau camp, but there’s the small matter of a mountain range in between. So the road first heads north to Blenheim, rounds the foothills before turning southwest back up the Awatere Valley.
As we make our way up the dusty gravel road past vineyards and then sheep stations, the mountains become clearer. From right to left we see Mt Gladstone (a perfectly triangular pyramid, from this angle a dead ringer for Tolkien’s Mt Doom), Mitre Peak and then Mt Alarm. Above them all stands the graceful bulk of Tapuae-o-Uenuku which, with a little bit of whimsy, can be translated as ‘‘footprint of the rainbow’’. At 2885 metres, just shy of 10,000 feet, it’s higher than any mountain in the North Island and is the highest peak outside the main ranges of the Southern Alps.
At one point, before someone got their tape measure out, it was considered the second-highest mountain in New Zealand. It can clearly be seen from Wellington’s south coast, as far as 120 kilometres away.
Captain Cook noted it when he sailed past in the Endeavour on February 7, 1770. He wrote: ‘‘Over this land appeared a prodigious high mountain the summit of which was covered in snow.’’ Cook nicknamed it The Watcher, as it remained visible for much of his traverse along the upper part of the South Island. It wasn’t until April 1864 that a party of three, led by Nehemiah McRae, made the first recorded ascent. At least, they were pretty sure they had. They neared the summit in foul, murky weather, stumbled around a bit and eventually left a £5 note in a jam jar under a small cairn at what they hoped was the summit.
Ten years later, Henry Stace and three other local musterers decided to try for the summit when they had a bit of time off after the autumn dip. Starting their climb late in the day, they had to camp out at 5000 feet. Stace reported that it got so cold even his moustache froze solid. At least the weather the next day was fine and when they got to the top they found a bottle inside a cairn that contained the names of the McRae group. On the descent they still had the energy to muster 300 lost sheep.
In 1890, the mountain suffered what a writer in the Marlborough Express clearly rated as the ultimate indignity when it was climbed by a party that included three ladies. The ‘‘plucky’’ Misses Parsons made the ascent in around nine hours (nearly twice as long as it would take ‘‘good climbers, men’’, according to the Express, but remarkable considering they were women, and hadn’t had a decent breakfast); Florence Parsons’ mountaineering dress was so shredded by the time she reached the top that she left a fragment of the garment in the metal tube on the summit.
The Indian only has two cylinders and as we gain altitude, one isn’t working that well. It’s coughing and spluttering up the gravel hills. This steep and winding route isn’t easy on oldschool, carburetted motorbike engines. Sir Ed found the same thing. By the time he gave up on his ride, it was dark, and he trudged five miles along the road with his heavy pack until he reached a farmhouse. The farmer
and his family kindly gave him dinner and let him stay the night in the shearers’ quarters.
The next day was Saturday morning and Ed was up early to get out on the road hitch-hiking. He had no luck. He got only two short lifts and ended up walking 15 miles (24km).
Finally, at the end of a long, dusty day, the footsore Ed made it to the jumping-off point for his trip: The bridge over the Hodder River, where the track begins. He felt a little lonely, he wrote, as he walked up the shingle riverbed to Shin Hut.
Shin Hut sounds like something you’d bump with your knee, and that’s almost how small it is. It’s a tiny, dilapidated corrugated-iron shed – no bigger than a small bedroom. Jamie and I push open the door and peer inside. Time hasn’t been kind to it. A little afternoon sun filters through a single murky window at the back, lighting some old bottles on the dirt floor, some newer bottles, and some not very new dead possums.
But there’s something else. On the wooden beams, written in what seems to be charcoal, are names and dates. Some of them date back to the 1940s. ‘‘L W Hunter 5/5/1942. RNZAF’’. So Ed wasn’t the first RNZAF man from Blenheim to attempt to climb Tappy. Did they give him advice? Did they loan him gear? I search for an ‘‘E P Hillary’’, but in vain.
Jamie and I console ourselves with the knowledge that if the inside of the hut is unappealing now, it was even worse when Ed was here:
I cooked myself a simple meal and settled down to sleep. For a while I dozed peacefully as the fire sank to a pile of embers. Then I became painfully aware that there were other living creatures in the hut. My mattress was a pile of dry grass and out of it came hordes of jumping fleas – they didn’t actually bite me but they were crawling everywhere. I had resigned myself to this when I was disturbed by an unusual rustling sound. I investigated and found the hut was alive with mice, no doubt attracted to my food. I put the food away more carefully and then settled down again. I awoke a little later with the impression that something strange was going on. I lay rigid for a while trying to identify the problem and soon I got the answer – a mouse was sitting between my eyebrows and tugging at a lock of my hair. I sat up with as good a squeak as any Victorian maiden.
Maybe it’s just the power of suggestion, but you don’t have to spend long inside Shin Hut before you’re feeling itchy. We decide not to chance the fleas or the barbershop mice. It’s a relief to be outside again.
We’re doing the climb in early summer so we can spread our old Fairydown 20 Below sleeping bags on the soft dry grass and get a little fire going with some bracken. It’s a beautiful, warm summer night and the full moon rises over the ranges as we talk about what Ed must have been feeling.
Unless he was as hard as those Hodder River stones, he must have been a bit daunted by what he was taking on. In summer, a climb up Tapuae-o-Uenuku is long, but not too technically difficult, provided the weather stays in your favour. The main difficulties reported are the endless treadmill slopes of shingle and scree.
In winter, Tappy is a different beast altogether. Many an expedition staggered back off the slopes reporting incessant, bewildering blizzards, deep powder snow, and cold so intense that ice froze an inch thick in the billy. Yet people kept trying to climb the mountain. In the winter of 1940 alone, there were four unsuccessful attempts before a fifth saw the mountain climbed. Even then, it came at a cost. One of the party’s feet were so badly frostbitten that he had to spend six weeks in bed.
That was only four years before Ed stood in the dusting of overnight snow surveying the bulk of the mountain above him against the pre-dawn sky. Tappy had almost certainly never been climbed solo in winter. In short, this was a hugely ambitious climb for a novice. There was every chance that Ed would not succeed, or that if he survived he
Stace reported that it got so cold even his moustache froze solid.
would be badly damaged.
Nor did he propose to do it the easy way. Nowadays, most people break the journey at the Hodder Huts. Very few try and take on the 2300m vertical height gain and the same return on the same day. And the route that Ed planned to take, 11km up the ridgeline of Tongue Spur, is one of the longer ridge routes in New Zealand. The Alpine Club’s route guide simply describes it as ‘‘long and arduous’’.
At 5am, after only four hours sleep and a quick breakfast, Ed shut the door on the hut. It was dark and very cold as he made his way down to the river.
Soon I was in the depths of a gorge, fording the river through freezing cold water, and winding backwards and forwards in the bowels of the mountain.
We try to follow the riverbank, but it snakes between sheer cliffs and we soon hit a steep bluff. Jamie and I link up shoulder to shoulder and drop our boots into the dark water. The river isn’t very wide, but it’s surprisingly deep in places and very, very cold. The dark, rushing flow is mesmerising. It’s better not to look at it and to concentrate instead on placing your boots firmly between the invisible rocks. Fifty metres after our first crossing, we have to cross again. It’s not long before our hobnail boots feel like large iceblocks strapped to our feet.
The scenery down here in the gorges is magnificent, but desolate and forbidding. It’s a gloomy place to be first thing in the morning. I try to imagine what it must have been like for a solo traveller. The river stones are too slippery, and the crossings are too many, for Ed not to have had some frights travelling alone. You have to stay focused the entire time; any complacency could send you on a freezing ride down the river to an uncertain fate. In some ways, it’s good practice for what you’ll face higher up on the mountain.
Between fords, I glance up at the steep slopes high above. Occasionally, I see a goat munching on the grass. Ask anyone to name a sure-footed animal, one that can handle itself nimbly and surely on the steepest slopes, and they’ll come back with ‘‘mountain goat’’, right?
Imagine how unnerving it is, then, to see decomposing former goats strewn at the bottom of cliffs every few hundred yards up the valley.
If goats can’t hang on, what chance do we have?