This story of double tragedy occurred on 3rd June 1918 (King’s Birthday). It combines recklessness and heroism and evokes horror and admiration. It is the story that lies behind the Ambury Memorial seen beside the summit (Razorback Track) at North Egmont. It bears two names: Arthur Hamilton Ambury, thirty-seven, and William Edwin Gourlay, aged twenty. A strange fate brought them together in death.

June is a month of transition on Egmont, with more ice than snow, with quick melting and quick freezing, when ridges are still free of a covering up to 6,000 feet and ugly black rocks stud most of the lower snow slopes. Such were the conditions when three young men set out from North Egmont for the summit. One had an ice-axe; he had been eight times to the summit in winter. The others had alpenstocks and were quite inexperienced. There was no rope. Gourlay’s boots lacked proper nails and the soles had holes. They climbed through a band of mist to reach the summit in bright sunshine. The leader, N. Fookes, had cut steps in the ice.

The descent was begun at 12.45 p.m. A few feet below the crater edge the leader did a standing glissade down the steep slope, then and waited for his companions to do the same. Inevitably they lost their footing; the leader stopped Gourlay, but the other, R. B. Macdonald, slid farther, only stopping when arrested by an ice-block which injured his back. Their lightheartedness was dissipated; danger was at hand. Gourlay’s nerve was shaken and Macdonald could barely stand. Fookes untied his puttees and improvised a rope to tie to Macdonald. Slowly and uncertainly they descended in steps that had been cut too far apart.

That day four mature climbers, enjoying the fine weather and the holiday, were glissading on easy slopes at about the 6,000 foot level. They were Mr and Mrs Ambury, C. G. Bottrill and T.V. Mackay. They heard a distant shout through the mist above them. It was repeated. It was a call for help. Only Ambury had an ice-axe, improvised from a tiler’s hammer. This he handed to Bottrill. Ambury then took his wife to a safe level before climbing back towards Bottrill and Mackay. When they emerged from the mist into sunshine they saw two figures sitting together with a third crouching alone above them. This was Gourlay. Slowly they cut good, broad steps in the ice. The gap was nearly closed and Ambury, forty feet below, carrying his alpenstock and rope, would soon reach them. It was between 4 p.m. and 4.30 p.m.

At this moment Gourlay, perhaps exhausted by his long ordeal, slipped. He was thirty feet above and in direct line with Ambury. Without hesitation and fully aware of the risk, Ambury plunged his alpenstock into the frozen snow, and as Gourlay reached him clutched at the latter’s trailing alpenstock. The shock was too great, and Ambury, fighting for his balance after alpenstock broke, slowly heeled over and followed Gourlay down the steep, icy slope, watched by their horrified companions. They slid to instant death, 800 to 1000 feet below at the head of Humphries Valley. That night at 11.30 J. P. Murphy, called urgently from Dawson Falls, found the bodies lying close together.

The gallantry of this attempt to save a life against almost impossible odds and the respect for Ambury as citizen and devoted Egmont climber brought a depth of feeling that has few parallels in Taranaki, especially as Ambury was the father of four young children. In October 1919 the Governor-General, Lord Liverpool, at a public reception in New Plymouth, presented Mrs Ambury with the Albert Medal with the words,  “His Majesty the King has commanded me to hand to Mrs Ambury the Albert Medal gained by her late husband for very gallant conduct.” On Good Friday that year, 1919, the Mayor of New Plymouth had unveiled a memorial at North Egmont, subscribed for in small amounts within a few days of the appeal being launched.

There are a set of bluffs on the North side of Mt Egmont/ Taranaki which bear his name: ‘Ambury Bluff’ west of Humphries Castle.