Thursday, Jun 01, 2023

As we celebrate 70 years since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay conquered Mt Everest, last week, only 6 years before, on Jan 1947, Hillary and his climbing partner Harry Ayres, stood on the summit of Mt Cook in New Zealand’s Southern Alps, Hillary’s training ground along many fine mountaineers who pioneered climbing there.

 We have for sale a copy of the Daily Mail for June 2, 1953, announcing the conquest the very day of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. The paper was not short of news, though it did manage to get Hillary’s first name wrong!

The early mountaineers in New Zealand wrote accounts of their feats. These are rare, but currently we have all of these 19th century works for sale in nice original bindings.

Green, W. S., The High Alps of New Zealand or A Trip to the Glaciers of the Antipodes with an Ascent of Mount Cook. 1883.

Mannering, G. E. With Axe and Rope in the New Zealand Alps.  1891.

Ross, Malcolm Aorangi; or, The Heart of the Southern Alps, New Zealand. 1892

Fitzgerald, E.A. Climbs in The New Zealand Alps. Being an Account of Travel and Discovery.1896.

Harper, A. P., Pioneer Work in the Alps of New Zealand; a Record of the First Exploration of the Chief Glaciers and Ranges of the Southern Alps.1896

Another rare one the first edition of the first woman to climb Mt Cook in 1910.

Du Faur, Freda, The Conquest of Mount Cook and Other Climbs : An Account of Four seasons' Mountaineering on the Southern Alps of New Zealand.1915.