Youthful beginnings - mountains - influences

Looking through an old NZ Geographic magazine recently I came across a short article called "Alpine Start" - someone's musings about the beginnings of his mountain climbing. I'd been thinking along similar lines myself of recent years so his article has prodded me into writing some of my own musings.

My main question seemed to be the eternal one about which was more important - nature or nurture - or some combination of the two - of course. After my father was away for almost four years during WW2 he returned to a well-mothered boy who was eager to break out. To his eternal credit he insisted that my mother "let him run free" - I was given a dog and together Chum and I roamed the paddocks, hunting and murdering rabbits about Hastings. When we moved to Kaponga, Taranaki, the prey became possums in the bush about the local mountain, then Egmont.

Mt Egmont (now Taranaki) from our house, Kaponga

One day when I was about 12 I biked from Kaponga up to Dawson Falls and started up the track towards the top of the mountain. Of course I didn't get to the top (about as far as the snow line in the photo above) but was amazed to discover that just by planting one foot after another you could get  above the bush and scrub line and into the tussock. I loved the changes in vegetation and in retrospect I think this was where it all started.

First Mountain Top 1952 - Torlesse (my father, centre)

When we shifted to Christchurch in 1950 the adventuring continued about Banks Peninsula. My father included me in his trips into the hills with some of his work mates. There were hunting trips after deer in the Canterbury foothills - mainly about Lake Sumner and Mt Thomas and several tramping and climbing trips up Mts Torlesse, Hutt, Cloudsley and Enys. Torlesse was an epic with us descending into the wrong valley (Staircase Gully) and having to climb up and out in rain.

I became quite driven about  my climbing ambitions and was soon under the wing of the CMC; going to their Easter Climbing camps up the Waimakariri.  Soon the peaks about Arthur's Pass were being climbed. From there it was just a matter of progression on longer and longer trips towards the peaks about Mt Cook and southwards. I also joined the New Zealand Alpine Club. My mother just kept herself back and worried about me until she heard my footsteps on the drive most Sunday nights. She always managed to find a train fare for me from the stressed family budget she operated.

Tasman Arete

Happy Climber - early 1950s

Along the way there were sprains and cuts and bruises but they all healed and from them and experience the skills of climbing developed. The mind seems to have a propensity for eliminating the unpleasant experiences of life and so my main memories are of glorious dawns and dusks, mists clearing to reveal snow and ice covered ridges and faces, moonlit valleys and mountains and happy laughing companions. Short or long doesn't matter; the important thing is the quality of your life. Life is so much better for having loved the mountains.  

Upper Waimakariri River - Mt Carrington

Old Mates Resting and Reminiscing

There were sacrifices of course. One was getting kicked out of the school choir for chosing to go climbing rather than attend the final rehearsal for the combined Christchurch schools' performance of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus arranged in many parts by Vernon Griffiths. My mother insisted that I went to the performance with her and, regretfully, I wished I was part of it.

Now, at 80, I'm still planning trips with the 'old climbing mates'. The peaks are lower. The jury is still out on how much nature and how much nurture was involved in those early alpine beginnings. Other views?

What I Learned at School. Part One

At School in the early 50s we had School Cadets. We were given scratchy uniforms (with short pants!) and .303 rifles to exercise with - we did marching, presenting arms and several other exercises to inculcate us with the idea of duty and thoughtless obedience. On our first day of exercises in the third form there was a lull in events  and we lay about in the sun with our weapons spread about in the grass around us. Up strode Maurie (officially Brother Maurice), the Headmaster, in full uniform - he'd been a Major in WW2. He spied the random disposition of our rifles - and his face coloured up.

He reached down and picked up one of our drill rifles. He then proceeded to inform us that it was one of our best friends - something our lives might depend upon - how we should look after it lovingly - keep it clean (and well functioning) and proceeded to show us how to 'stack (stook?)' our rifles so that the mechanisms would not become dirty and seize up with mud or grit. This involved making pyramids of three or more of our rifles.

But before he set us about stacking our rifles he demonstrated the various other uses to which a rifle could be put. I've never forgotten it: nor I think have any of the others. First he showed how a bayonet should be fixed and then he displayed, in what appeared to be a well rehearsed haka, the art of hand to hand fighting with a rifle. Bayoneting was only a little part of it. There followed the use of the rifle on all the vulnerable parts of the anatomy - the rifle butt (head, chest), the heel (solar plexus, groin), stock and forestock (face, teeth) and the boot of course - even discharging a round to remove a bayonet stuck firmly in bone. The display was horrific but masterly.

"Maurie"

Along the way there were several years of basic education. Xavier was quite good at the basics - all the usual things - but no biology. When I did Zoology I at university, I didn't even know what an amoeba was!

Years later Maurie was my coach when I was in the first fifteen. Our school was in what would now be called a decile one area and there was no grass. So we practised our rugby tackles, scummaging and rucking on the coke cinders (a freebee from the gasworks across the road) that formed the school playground. It was during the days of great forward dribbling rushes and Maurie was schooling his forwards on the art of controlling a dribbled ball. He was built like a front row forward - squat and solid - and our job was to try to dribble the ball at our toes and past him. He would take the ball up and usually up-end us over his shoulder. "You turn Smith" he said as he rolled the ball towards me. I dribble the ball up to him and, as much by good luck as anything, managed to dribble the ball past him - on the way knocking him down, stomping over his chest and rolling him in the dust. I looked back to see him picking himself up and dusting himself off. "I've gone too far this time" I thought. Maurie, who was still the Headmaster, looked up at me and said, "Very good, but you're a bony bastard, Smith."

When I professed my lack of Christian faith to him later he just sighed and said, "Don't worry about it Barry, just leave the world a better place for having been here." Great advice too.

We parted as good friends when I left school. There were other things I learned as well at school. For parts two and three click on science and supplejack in the labels section.

Christchurch

Mike's neighbour Magenta with the Girls and Chickens

Hannah Testing Snow on Mikes Lawn

Catherine and I recently spent a week in Christchurch looking after two of our grandchildren, Tasman and Hannah, and giving their parents some respite to cycle the Heaphy track ( - that's what they do for a holiday)! We did some walking along the eastern coastline of Christchurch past Shag Rock (now 'munted', as they say, and sadly so for me as I'd spent some of my youth sitting happily on top of it) and spent a day at Oxford with my old climbing mate Mike White to give the girls some farm experience. It seemed to be all about 'chooks'. The girls were great company and the grandparents thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Each evening before tea I spent about an hour teaching them the art of cycling, braking and getting up again after a fall - the 'getting going again' seemed to come naturally to them.

It was sad on Sunday to look at the wreck of Christchurch - all the buildings awaiting the wrecking ball and the place where I started work (the old Provincial Building) collapsed - but my old office in the wooden part still intact.  It is certainly going to take many years to repair and the scars will be permanent.

Tasman, Hannah and Granny - a flock of reds!

Mike, Girls and Henny-Penny