Century since Aspiring ascent

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Photo by Stephen Jaquiery.

A hundred years ago, Major Bernard Head and his New Zealand guides became the first men to climb Mt Aspiring. Marjorie Cook looks back.

1.15am on Tuesday, November 23, 1909 three men left their bivouac perched 1700m high on the Mt Aspiring snow fields, and prepared breakfast.

Major Bernard Head, of England (who died at Gallipoli on August 12, 1915), did not record what he and his New Zealand alpine guides actually ate.

Almost certainly they would have melted snow for a cup of tea, as they did the day before.

Jack Clarke of The Hermitage, Mt Cook, and Alec Graham, who with his brother Peter owned the Franz Josef Glacier Hotel, had not spent all the previous day just drinking tea.

They had also kicked steps into the route they planned to take to the 3033m summit.

For two days, the three climbers had risen early, examined the weather and returned to bed for a few more hours.

But this day was to be different.

For a reason not recorded in Maj Head's remarkably concise diary, and in the face of an advancing northerly storm, they gave the mountain a crack.

Breakfast was consumed by 1.45am, and less than an hour later they had left camp.

A second breakfast was consumed in the fog on a plateau, at about 4am.

The fog must have cleared, because they continued, and by 9.25am they were on top, where it was windy.

"Just got on top in time," Maj Head wrote.

The weather was so bad the team sheltered for half an hour under a rock on the way down.

By 2.30pm they were back at their bivvy.

They then retreated to a lower camp and were in bed by 8pm.

It had been very cold climbing.

"(Barometer) jumping, owing to the bad weather," was Maj Head's last note of the day.

A month later, Maj Head gave more details to the Taranaki Herald.

"After (the northwest arete) we came to the top, which consisted of a heavy corniced ridge, about 160ft long. Clarke said it was safe, but we had to cross it to get to the actual summit.

"The only way was to step aside, with one's feet in Westland and one's axe driven into the cornice at the top. Looking over, one saw a sheer drop of 8000ft into Otago, as it was the boundary line.

"It was a weird experience. We spent about five minutes on the top, and then left, as it was very cold. The side-stepping down the 160ft was almost worse than the going up.

From the top, we got a fine view of Cook and Sefton, but the lower mountains were blotted out with fog."

So that was that.

No lyrical reflections and nothing about a celebration.

That's tonight instead, at the Lake Wanaka Centre, from 7.30pm.

It's taken 100 years.

(Sources: Scott Gilkison, in his 1951 book Aspiring and the Department of Conservation.)