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“Above Worry Level”
Winter at The Hermitage

(Written and Illustrated by Elsie K. Morton.)

“Yet all how beautiful; Pillars of pearl Propping the cliffs above, stalactites bright From the ice-roof depending; and beneath, Grottoes and temples with their crystal spires And gleaming columns radiant in the sun.”

—William Henry Burleigh.

It is a good old slogan and a good introduction to the Hermitage at any time. But particularly is it good when the winter winds are raw and biting cold, when the fog lies like a grey blanket over the Waitemata, and bitter southerlies come roaring and ramping across Cook Straits to blow the roof off Wellington.

At exactly the right moment “to meet the times” and the mood, the papers advertised special excursion rates to the Hermitage. It might be cold, I reflected, but it couldn't be much worse than a northern winter, and the chances were it would be a good deal better. I have never been colder than when passing down city streets on a raw winter afternoon, and never hotter than when plodding through deep snow on the slopes of Ruapehu. But to tell anybody I was going down to Mount Cook to get warm would have been a little too much, so I just murmured “Winter Sports.” I know as much about ice skating as a Fijian fire-walker, and my ski-ing activities usually consist of a series of hectic twenty-second swoops down a snow slope, punctuated every five minutes by a graceful backward movement accompanied by a simultaneous upward motion of both legs.

A night in the Main Trunk Express, a day in Wellington, a night on the ferry, a hundred miles by train to Timaru, and a 130 mile motor run, and there we were at the Hermitage, with its blazing log fires, centrally-heated rooms, ping-pong tables and dance-room. “Above Worry Level.” I looked out my window early next morning, and saw the dazzling snow rim of Sefton flush red beneath the first rays of sunrise. The first sunrise I had seen that winter—the ice-regions had done that for me already!

There had been exceptionally heavy falls of snow for weeks previously, and conditions were splendid for ski-ing. An hour after breakfast, the equipment room was invaded. Each pair of amateur feet was stoutly encased in a pair of mountaineering boots with stout nails; each pair of boots was firmly strapped to a long, slender pair of skis. Oh, the sensation of those first faltering steps! The thrill of mounting confidence as you find you actually can slide one foot out in front of the other and keep your balance, the daring increase of speed from snail-crawl to walking pace, then the sudden unnerving dip in the ground, the wild slither this-way-and-that, the sensation of suddenly page 47 sitting in a chair-that-isn't-there, and the amazing evolutions of the novice trying to regain the upright position! The blood is tingling in your veins, you brush the snow out of your ears, and set off again—and again! Next morning you are swooping down the track in fine style, even contemplating a ski run up the Tasman—but in the end you just take the charabanc over to the Hooker Bridge, and decide to tramp it up to the Ball Hut. There was, indeed, no option when I was last down at the Hermitage; nowadays the brave young mountaineers are often driven right up to the Hutt. Perhaps next time I will drive up too, but it will be with many a haunting memory of my first trip, when we set out with horses, forded the blue and swirling Hooker—there was no bridge then—and lunched beside the waters of the lovely little Blue Lake, now a skater's paradise.

Like a long black snake our tramping party trailed along the little track beneath the frowning hillside, mile after mile we trudged through the crisp snow till a halt was called for lunch, near the site of the Blue Lake. I did not complete the trip this time, and after lunch set out alone on the six mile tramp back to the Hermitage. It was a heavenly afternoon, bright and warm, with larks singing all the way. The snow-crowned peaks of the Sealey Range frowned down on the valley, now white with snow; soon the snow would be gone, and blue glacier waters would go swirling down to join the Hooker.

Bright days followed, in which we climbed Sebastopol, practised ski-ing, and went on skis across the valley to the rugged memorial erected in memory of that alpine tragedy away back in 1913, when three lives were lost in an avalanche. And then, one morning, there was no sunrise glow on Sefton, but a lowering sky, and a new feeling in the air. I looked out the window as I sat at breakfast, and suddenly there was a flurry of white—snow! My very first snowfall! I ran outside, fearing it might all be over before I could reach the door. But it lasted half an hour. Oh, the softness, the whiteness of the lovely, whirling flecks, the beauty of the snow mantle piling up on every little stone and shrub, on the eaves of the building, on the roof of the porch! Then, suddenly, it was all over. The sun shone out on a world all glistening white, a purer and more beautiful world than mortal eyes could long endure.

“Above Worry Level!” If only we could all reach that goodly altitude, even for a brief day or two, how it would help us over the Dismal Days! But the glory of the mountains is always there, with the sun bathing the world in radiance, and the hand of the Creator made manifest in the majesty, the everlasting peace and beauty of the Shining Heights.

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