New Zealand, 1969, 1st edition. 196 pp, 16 b/w photos, index, endpaper maps. Original blue cloth hardcover with no dust jacket and no fading to spine and cover. Fine indeed.
Biography of a well-known guide on Mt Cook and many other New Zealand mountains. As England has taken the opportunity to climb all over the world, but to learn about glaciers all they had to do is book passage to New Zealand.
When booking passage by ship to NZ, Australiat or India, just remember POSH. Book your stateroom: Port Out, Starboard Home.
The mountaineers of New Zealand have had a far greater impact on the mountaineering world than might be suggested by the country’s population size. This is because some of the finest and hardest climbing in the world is in the Southern Alps and particularly centered around Mount Cook (since 1998 known officially as Aoraki/Mount Cook.)
The glaciers of the Southern Alps of NZ have been a training ground for climbers to learn how to climb and travel on a glacier safelyon their rivers of ice. They then go on the the big stuff, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Alps, Caucasus, Pamirs, Tibet, Alaska, Greenland, Canada, and the Arctic and Antarctica.
Anyone climbing in the area will be familiar with the settlement of Mount Cook Village (also known as The Hermitage) which serves as a tourist center and base camp for the mountain. It is located 4 km from the head of the Tasman Glacier, 12 km south of Aoraki/Mount Cook's summit. In 1929 Mick Bowie applied for guide duties at the Hermitage. From then on Mount Cook dominated his life.
In those early days, the sport of mountaineering was only for the well-to-do, who indulged in it escorted by professional guides like Mick Bowie. From 1929 Mick Bowie worked his way from junior guide to Chief Guide and trainer of guides. Just remember, ''At either end of the social spectrum there exists a leisure class.''
This book is a 40-year record of his service, and covers the developing days of a great alpine resort and days of epic climbs, desperately hazardous work and long stretches of grim endurance, as well as moments of humor and friendships.
A very modest man, if it had been left to Mick nothing would have been written, and so his wife Nan Bowie has written this biography and fleshed out Mick’s few words with the memories of those who climbed with him and became his life long friends and admirers.
