Mind THE GAP

IN 1894, A KIWI TRIO GOT WIND OF PLANS BY AMERICAN EDWARD FITZGERALD TO BE THE FIRST TO SUMMIT AORAKI/MT COOK. GUY MANNERING AND MARMADUKE DIXON HAD CLIMBED TO WITHIN 60M OF THE SUMMIT IN 1890, AND LOCAL CLIMBERS FELT IT SHOULD BE NEW ZEALANDERS WHO CLIMBED THE PEAK FIRST.

So three locals got an expedition together – Tom Fyfe, George Graham and Jack Clark – and won the race, summiting at 1.30pm on Christmas Day in bitingly cold winds. The weather presented such pressing challenges to the human condition that the next day the Kiwi climbers simply abandoned their camp on the upper Hooker Glacier, under Harper Saddle, and bailed for the safety of The Hermitage. 

Eighteen years later, in 1913, the whole camp was discovered 6.4km down the glacier, in the middle of the ice and on a line between Hooker Hut and Ball Pass. It had been covered with snow and then subsumed by the glacier itself. The tent was still fairly sound, although the ropes were rotten, and on the end of the ropes were scrub branches that had been pushed into the snow to anchor the tent. Sleeping bags, socks and other odds