Frank Alack

'Few men living today can claim to have a mountain named after them! But Mt Alack in the Southern Alps bears silent witness to a lifetime of work in New Zealand's lonely world of bush and mountain. A pioneer guide at both the Hermitage and Fox Glacier, Frank Alack has climbed many of New Zealand's most famous peaks, guided both eager tourists and experienced climbers, and survived snow storms and avalanches. Eventually, marriage to Dora Deal, a well known violinist from Christchurch, started to tug him away from his beloved mountains. But he never lost his active love of Nature. Time and again he returned to the hills, and finally succeed in visiting the Antarctic, just as in his youth he had reached the Arctic. An indefatigable lecturer and writer (his first book, Guide Aspiring sold out long ago), Frank Alack has written in Share My Joys a warm human story of courage and endeavour against a background of soaring peaks and high bush country.'