| Mt Hopkins
The main range east of the Hooker Range.
(left, the Dark Tower in front of Mt Hopkins, then a hair-raising narrow ridge to Mt McKerrow that we climbed in about 1953 from the other side, in winter. One person got frostbitten feet.
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The Hooker Range
Fifty to a hundred miles south of Cook, the Alps are split in two by the Landsborough valley which for sixty or seventy miles flows south along the axis until in meets the Haast of which more anon. West towards the Tasman Sea is a truly noble range seen by few and climbed by less. The southern most peak of note is Hooker, followed to the north by Dechen, Strachan and Fettes. Here the rock bedding is vertical and the spurs that run to the west, the Strachan Ridge, and the Bannock Braes, have jagged rock and narrow strips of glacier.
Hooker and the East Ridge.
Has it been climbed? I fancy not, the SW ridge is easier.
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The glacial dome of Dechen with Strachan showing beyond.
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A rocky spur leading west, the Bannock Braes.
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Strachan from closer up. Notice how the almost vertical bedding
creates narrow, diagonal glacier tongues.
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| The Douglas Neve lies on a sloping shelf several miles long and west of Mt Sefton with the Sierra Range seen in the distance (north). Immediately below is an immense cliff down which ice thunders into what used to be the Douglas Glacier at the head of the Karangarua River. It is now mainly an ice-dammed lake. |
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Mt Shrimpton
We excel over all others in giving our mountains the most awful names. Mainly they are the names of politicians, bureaucrats or junior technicians in the Survey Dept. Mr "Explorer Douglas" a century ago gave names to mountains out of Greek mythology but they were seldom accepted. One mountain group was renamed "Mt Percy Smith; Mts Hickson, Simpson, Kitson and Dobson". Vincent Pyke, another early surveyor went to great trouble to find out the original Maori names. They were all rejected. In a rage and a fit of intense sarcasm he renamed the rivers of the Ranfurly area, the "Wedderburn, the "Kyeburn", the "Eweburn", the "Hogburn", "Swinburn" etc. It backfired, they were all accepted and are so called to this day! However...
In the foreground is the Bushburn which leads to Lake Hawea and over the low saddle, the Cameron which drains into the Makarora and so into Lake Wanaka. Even in 1930 there was probably permanent ice in the corries on the hills. This is taken late summer. At the present moment (July) to fight your way over that insignificant col in neck deep snow, would take a man not a boy!
But you would find deer trails, those big old stags can force through very deep snow indeed.
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- Hooker Range
