Tish Glasson - Mastering the mountains

An early baby boomer, born in 1945, the daughter of a World War I Passchendaele vet and bank manager, Tish Glasson has lived on the edge in the great outdoors. Highly qualified in mountain safety, she never took risks though, hundreds of kids delivered home safely in her capable hands.

Courage is in the blood. Tish’s father joined the Army at 17, a Sergeant by 18, and was among early Canterbury First Regiment advancers at Passchendaele, Tish there on that front line for the century commemorations in October 2017.

Early years were spent in Hawera then Dunedin. Holidays were at their bach beside Queenstown Hallenstein Mill Store at Kawarau Falls with other Dunedin families – the Fultons, from Fulton Hogan, and Dr Chapman – daughter Jill (Egerton), Tish’s holiday playmate.

“We’d never swim immediately above the dam. There were two drownings at Tomkies Jetty,” Tish says. “Years later I wouldn’t even kayak through there as there’s a dangerous undertow.”

The Fulton’s boat almost caught fire once on Lake Wakatipu, Colonel McKenzie from Walter Peak rescuing and towing them to safety at Closeburn.

An accomplished skier, starting aged eight, the Coronet Peak base building was a chalet and there were two rope tows. “It cost 10 bob (shillings) a day – 4 for the tow belt, 5 for the bus and 1 shilling left to buy a pie,” Tish smiles. Private vehicles weren’t permitted, and they trudged over a mile from Car Park 7 carrying their gear.

Science took hold at Columba College – Tish now a member of the Clutha branch of The Royal Society of Science. She and her classmates almost blew up an Otago University lab during her BSc post graduate studies, after highly toxic chemicals spilled when somebody slammed the fridge shut, causing it to explode.

“We had to send the Fire Brigade back to get their masks!”

In 1969 Tish landed a job at Waimea College under principal Fred Gallas, a renowned climber and outdoors man. Exhausted sixth formers would doze off face down in their dinner on school camp. “Fred worked them hard,” she says.

River crossings were taught using ‘mutual support’ and poles – no health and safety requirements back then.

Tish then taught at Methven High School – among the first to ski The Golden Mile in 1972 on what would become Mount Hutt Skifield the following year. “I followed Austrian instructor Willie Huber, there to do early analysis. We climbed the south summit, about 1000ft (304.8m), with a PE teacher, two 7th form boys with sledges and a bunch of farmers. I’ve never skied such perfect conditions again. It was absolutely perfect powder,” she says. “I went back in 2022 for my 50th anniversary and skied that same line.”

Highly certified with the Mountain Safety Council and holding avalanche qualifications, Tish was one of the few teachers to take geography and biology camps up the Tasman Glacier, under Mueller Glacier and up to Mueller Hut. “These were very fit, Canterbury country kids.”

While head of science at Masterton’s Solway Girls’ College she had a girl with severe appendicitis deep in Tongariro National Park in the middle of the night. Outdoor Pursuits director Graeme Dingle was busy elsewhere, so another instructor ran to the Chateau to raise the alarm. “Unfortunately, word got out in the media and the principal had to deal with worried parents ringing about their kids.”

Fiordland College was next where Tish and Robyn Hutchins launched the Fiordland Tramping Club, before Tish taught at Wakatipu High for six years, starting just after it opened in 1980. Almost reaching Lake Lochnagar with only two ‘hardy boys’ on Branches Camp – one, actor Stelios Yiakmis, weather closed in, Tish and Barry Lawrence returning them to 16 Mile Hut where Bruce Walker was waiting with the others. “It was a very wet night under tent flies, so we had the whole fourth form – 30 kids and three adults, in a tiny musterers’ hut.” Branches runholder Arthur Borrell and daughter Kaye came to the rescue in a flooded Shiel Burn with a Land Rover and two packhorses for the gear, helping Tish and the others ford the kids, seven at a time, over a swelling Shotover River.

A Ruapehu volunteer ski patroller and Southland Face Rescue Team member, Tish was also a SAR volunteer and taught Correspondence School, teaching sports stars all over the world, until retiring in 2021.

She’s fallen down an avalanche chute on the Tasman Saddle and been plucked from Bauman Glacier by a daring Mount Cook ski plane pilot on dusk, with 6500 feet (1981.2m) of avalanche danger below. However, none of it had her quite ready for three years in Brunei on Borneo from 1994. “The British SAS instructors put us civilians through very hard jungle training, flying us out in a monsoon, all for Gurkha Relief.”

Tish first joined the Otago University Tramping Club in 1968 and is still a member at Tararua Tramping Club. A pilot since 1966, she flew a few commercial flights in Fiordland, gaining her Milford rating, and is also an accomplished diver.

Turning 80 this year, she’s now focused on writing, documenting her many mountain adventures.