Chief among the reasons for the sudden development in climbing among the youth of Christchurch, the writer would place first, the opening of the Otira tunnel, and second, the work of Gerard Carrington and his followers. The Otira tunnel reason may seem surprising, but on closer inspection it seems obvious. The people of Christchurch, through the cheap excursions to Arthur's Pass and Otira offered by the Railway Department, were educated to the fact that there were other peaks in our Alps besides those four we learnt at school—Cook, Tasman, Sefton, and away south, Aspiring. A trip to Arthur's Pass, a walk over the pass to Otira, and the lad about town changed his ideas of the Alps being represented by a fishbone running the length of the island, with four crosses on it. One trip to the mountains in fine weather is a big step towards the making of a mountaineer. A tramp over the pass, and the excursionists are rewarded with a glimpse of a real mountain, Rolleston, which the natives of the locality would have told them had been climbed only twice. Nowadays, Rolleston is climbed regularly by all sorts of climbers, even by a boy of fourteen and a half and a girl of fourteen. Only in winter is it difficult to climb.”

page 26