27. Reading Skills Comprehension: HIGH ADVENTURE

HIGH ADVENTURE

When I was twenty years old I had my first long trip. With an older friend, I visited the South Island of New Zealand. One of our plans was to spend two days at a famous tourist resort, “The Hermitage”, right in the heart of the giant peaks of the southern Alps. We had a magnificent drive through the mountains and arrived at the Hermitage in the early afternoon.

It was a perfect day and the great peaks around seemed to tower over our heads. I looked on them with a growing feeling of excitement—the great rock walls, the hanging glaciers and the avalanche-strewn slopes. And then strangely, stirred by it all I felt restless for action and decided to go for a walk. I set off towards the Scaly Range, which I could see high up, behind the hotel. I soon realised it was much farther than I had judged, but for some reason, I kept going on and soon with an astonishing sense of achievement I climbed back down the long slopes to the Hermitage.

That evening, as I sat in the lounge, I felt restless and excited. And then the hum of voices suddenly hushed, and I looked up to see two young men coming into the room. They were fit and tanned, they had an unmistakable air of competence about them. I could hear a whisper going around the room. “They’ve just climbed Mount Cook”. And soon they were the centre of an admiring group. Some years later I came to know the two famous personalities, Stevenson and Dick. They had had a great partnership in climbing and they and they’d just completed the first Grand Traverse of Mount Cook from North to South. I retreated to a corner of the lounge filled with a sense of futility at the dull, mundane nature of my existence. Those chaps, now, we’re really getting a bit of excitement out of life. I decided there and then to take up mountaineering. Tomorrow I’d climb something.

1- Answer the following questions in short (2×4=8)

(a) When did Edmund Hillary go on his first long trip?

(b) What had inspired the narrator to go on a long walk?

(c)What was the narrator’s experience in the lounge that evening?

(d) Why did the narrator feel depressed?

2- Pick out words from the passage that mean the following (1×4=4)

(a) well known (lines Ito 10)

(b) splendid (lines 1 to 10)

(d) the joint venture (lines 8 to 18)

Answers

1- (a) When he was twenty years old.

(b) The great rock walls, the hanging of glaciers, the avalanche—stream slopes