Wandering in the Wills (Easter 1955)

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WANDERING IN THE WILLS. Easter : 1955. The Haast Pass is a very low level pass over the main divide at the Southern end of Westland - it is also an easy pass to gain, there being a road over ito On Good Friday morning five of us set out from Lake Hawea and reached the pass quite easily, per V - 8 Station waggono Unfortunately a couple of miles over the pass we had to get out and walk and now, being on the West Coast side of the divide, it was raining.

The party comprised Fred and Dorothy Hughes, Tudor Atkinson, Al Fellows and myself ( Tararuas, Alpine Club, "T, and M. 1 and other odd riff raff). Reluctantly leaving the waggon we donned parkas and headed off down the Haast to the Wills confluence and then started up the Wills Gorgeo This was a typical West Coast Gorge, and we scrambled along a blazed cullers track for three or four hours without seeing much of the river, until we suddenly emerged onto broad grassy flats which gave first class travelling We camped that night under a bivvy rock about half a mile above the gorge and as we went to sleep the stars were breaking through. Saturday morning dawned fine. We had a liesurely breakfast then set off up a bush spur which led out onto snowgrass slopes of the main divide between Mts, Wray and Brewster. Midway through the afternoon we made camp by a small stresm at about 5,000 feet and hit the sack earlyo Three quarters of an hour above our camp was the ridge of the main divide. Sunday morning we went up to it in brilliantly fine weather, and from there had a look at Mta Brewster ( 8,264pFt.) which was unclimbed from this northern side, It looked rather formidable, red, Tudor and I took a rope and our axes and set off. We had some loose rock scrambling, a dash under a little icefall, an hours chopping on hard frozen snow and then about a dozen ropelengths on very steep but sound rock and we were on the main ridge of the peak, about 400 feet from the summito The lack of hours now made itself apparent, we were climbing slowly, three men on a rope and only one moving at a time, so we had a bite to eat and decided to go back down ( the stretch between us and the top looked a bit tricky tood) The view around us was superb, in fact extra "curly". Cook dominated the northern skyline and Aspiring did likewise to the south; there wasn't a patoh of cloud between themo After burning up a few hundred feet of film we retyrned the way we had come and reached camp at nightfall, Monday morning we packed up camp and went exploringe First up onto the divide as on the day before, then northwards along its We traversed under Mts. Wray and Tole and reached Wills Pass which is a route from the Wills to the Hunters The impressive southern faces of Mt. Enderby presented themselves across the pass but the view did not last and we headed down to the Wills bush again in drifting murk. The river falts were ours by dusk and we camped in what one would call the perfect campsite, The Wills is well provided with theseo Tuesday morning saw us tottering back down rivers A Social call on a couple of Government Uullers ( no tea thanks!), a few parting photos on the flats and we plunged into the gloom of the gorge once more. Some speed was made on the return journey and we were soon on the waggon (not really) and heading for the Hydro - beer biscuits and forty thousand bachelors So ended an Easter marred only by four days of cloudless skies (photographically speakinge ) : "Nuts" Bolto