# With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps/Chapter 5

CHAPTER V
THIRD ATTEMPT TO CLIMB AORANGI
Photography on the Tasman Glacier—Attempt to scale Mount De la Bêche
Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends.—Childe Harold.
It is a thousand pities that the ennobling pursuit of mountaineering is so neglected in this wonderland of peaks and glaciers. Such advantages as we enjoy surely cannot exist much longer without calling out the spirit which lies dormant in hundreds of the lovers of adventure and worshippers of the beautiful in Nature, who live on in our midst from day to day in a conventional and monotonous round.
There are pleasures in the pursuit of adventure amongst the great snow-fields and glaciers which only those who are initiated can thoroughly enjoy.
Ask the man who goes climbing what these pleasures are, and he cannot tell you, he cannot define them—yet he feels them, and they are ever luring him on. They are indefinite, inexpressible; but there is a sort of 'mountain fever' which comes when one has once 'lost one's heart to the great mountains.' In the work all a man's best physical, and many of his mental, powers are brought out and strengthened. There is the energy, perseverance, and patience to last through a long day's ​swagging, the pluck to face all sorts of dangers amongst the snow, ice, and rocks, combined with the prudence to know when, for the safety of oneself and the party, to give in and restrain enthusiasm. There are the qualities of organisation and system, for which plenty of exercise is found; indeed, one cannot overrate the benefits which accrue.
Let any who have indulged in different branches of athletics put their swags on their backs and go for a mountain climb, and I venture to say that there are greater opportunities for bringing their frames into good going order and testing their muscular abilities than can be met with in any school of athletics.
I have known men in England who have revelled in all our great national games, but who invariably put mountaineering at the head of the list after once having tasted the sweets of climbing and been captivated by the charms of the world above the snow-line.
To the artistic what do not the mountains offer? To the botanist, the geologist, the naturalist, the athlete, and even to the invalid ? The strange new world one enters in sub-Alpine regions, the 'foretaste of heaven' one seems to get above the snow-line.
In out-of-the-way New Zealand we have all these benefits at hand, and yet we leave the opening out and exploration of our great glacier systems to foreigners and to visitors from distant lands.
But this is digressive, and I must tell the story of our third visit to the Tasman Glacier.
On the evening of March 23, 1889, the visitors at the Hermitage were suddenly moved to compassion, mingled with no small amount of amusement, in ​beholding through the fast-falling snow-flakes the arrival of a dog-cart and tandem.
The leader of the team, a big chestnut draught-mare, seemed to be doing all the work, and pulling along wheeler, cart and all. The travel-worn and weary occupants of the vehicle were Mr. M. J. Dixon and myself, and we had taken French leave for Mr. Huddleston's chestnut at Birch Hill, six miles down the road from the Hermitage, our leader having almost given in after a 250-mile journey from Christchurch.
Another bold, would-be mountaineer, Mr. P. H. Johnson, accompanied us with the knocked-up leader, and following in the coach was Mr. F. Cooper, a photographic operator from Messrs. Wheeler and Son or Christchurch, who was to join our party for a week's work amongst the scenes of the Tasman Glacier.
The morning of the 24th revealed the flats around the Hermitage all snow-covered, and the day was devoted to completing preparations for a fortnight's camp on the glacier.
On the 25th, the weather improving, our party left the Hermitage, being joined by James Annan and William Low, the former a boundary keeper on the rabbit fence, the latter engaged to help us with the swagging. Two better men over rough ground never put swag on back, and both entered into the spirit of the expedition and worked like Trojans to make it a success.
We drove our dog-cart down to the Hooker River at the usual crossing-place—the point of the Mount Cook Range—over two or three miles of boulders which tested the merits of the coachbuilder's art to the ​utmost, as also the driver's ability to stay in the cart. Here we found that a wire rope, some 200 feet in length, had been thrown across the river to facilitate the work of the rabbiters, who were engaged in keeping back the hordes of 'silver-greys' which were making their way northwards and ruining run-holders right and left. On this wire rope is slung, on runners, a rude box, travellers entering the same pull themselves across, and almost invariably take the skin off their knuckles with the runners. Crossing by this rope we piled our swags on to Annan's packhorse and walked three miles up the valley to a patch of Wild Irishman scrub, where since our last visit a small galvanised iron hut had been built. A day's delay here with bad weather, and then we shouldered our swags, and on the evening of the 27th reached our well-known Ball Glacier camp.
Our plans were as follows: To do a few days' work with the photographer, so as to settle his business first, and then be free to tackle Aorangi during the following week. We wished to give the photographer every assistance in our power, as such scenery does not often come within reach of the photographic artist, however energetic he may be, and can only be approached by a properly equipped Alpine party, strong enough to carry a good supply of provisions and all the necessaries for preserving life in such out-of-the-way parts.
Our first excursion, then, was to cross the Tasman Glacier and make for the point of the Malte Brun Range at the turn in the glacier just opposite the point of De la Bêche. Here it was that Dr. von Lendenfeld had ​made his bivouac for his remarkable ascent of the Hochstetter Dome in 1883, when he was accompanied by his wife and one porter—an ascent that took twenty-seven hours of constant ice and snow work. This excursion would effect the double purpose of giving us some practice in ice work, and of securing a fine set of views.
The day was gloriously fine, and we felt our spirits rise as we scrambled over the massive lateral moraine of the Ball Glacier, across the glacier itself—which, by-the-by, shows very dirty ice at this point, being laden with rocks brought down many years since in the avalanches from the great ice-seamed crags of Aorangi, which towered in lofty grandeur above us—then over the medial moraine between the Ball and Hochstetter Glaciers, where a halt was made, and views of Aorangi and the Hochstetter ice-fall were secured.
Once more we stood before this marvellous piece of Nature's handiwork, again we heard the thunder of the avalanches, again we saw the glinting, bristling séracs, and gazed in silence and admiration on the ice-fall of the Hochstetter.
Crossing the Hochstetter we struck up the medial moraine between that and the Tasman, straight for the point of De la Bêche.
The best walking on the New Zealand glaciers is almost invariably found upon the margin of the medial moraine close to where it joins the clear ice, so that one is travelling over a mixture of ice and rocks. The clear ice is too hummocky and entails much undulating progression, if I may use such an expression, and ​the moraine itself—well, the walking on the moraine itself cannot be fitly described in parliamentary language.
We secured many good views as we proceeded with a 10 × 8 camera. Mount Haidinger on our left was particularly fine, its eastern face being almost entirely clothed with the Haast Glacier, which struck us as being one of the finest cascades of ice we had yet seen, larger in extent than the ice-fall of the Hochstetter, though not so picturesque.
Time was fast going, and we found that to get off the glacier before dark it would be requisite to strike away to our right, over a mile of much crevassed ice, to the gully next in the Malte Brun Range, which we had originally set out to reach. Jumping crevasses and cutting a few occasional steps, we at last arrived at the eastern side, finding a very suitable place to pitch our Whymper tent, and discovering to our joy a small supply of firewood.
The gully in which we camped had its origin far away up in the red-sandstone precipices of Malte Brun, and in its bed rushed down a foaming mountain torrent fed everlastingly by the many small hanging glaciers above. This stream rushed headlong into a large tunnel of ice in the side of the Tasman Glacier, over which was formed a tremendous cave, above which, again, were sheer walls of ice capped with morainic accumulations, the height from tunnel mouth to moraine summits being about 500 feet.
A view of this cave was secured by the photographer.
Friday the 29th was a morning to be remembered. ​Thick mists covered the peaks and seemed to hang over us like a pall. Here and there a shaft of sunlight penetrated to the ice-field at our feet. Only now and then would the rude screech of a kea remind us that we were not really dreaming in some enchanted land.
We had often talked of attempting the ascent of Mount De la Bêche when we should have polished off Aorangi; but as Aorangi seemed to require so much 'polishing off,' and we were now camped so close to De la Bêche, we thought we might as well try our hand at the mountain and see what we could do in a one-day's trip from this point, while we left the artist to his own devices for the time being.
De la Bêche, then, it was to be. So off we started after a breakfast of sheep's tongues and Liebig, putting our oilskins on our backs and taking our axes, and striking due north for the foot of the long arête which descends from the mountain and separates the Rudolf from the Tasman Glacier. Halfway to our ridge we had to put on the rope, for legs began to go through the now snow-covered crevasses in a promiscuous and unpleasant fashion.
It was indeed like an enchanted land, for the atmospheric effects were extraordinary. High up, shadowed in the mist, were reproduced the forms of the highest peaks of Mounts Malte Brun and Darwin. There was no mistaking their familiar outline, which was thrown out in the mist thousands of feet above, like the spectre on the Brocken.
Then the atmospheric effect of the mist hanging over the Rudolf Glacier was most wonderful. Looking ​the glacier, we seemed to gaze into an enormous blue grotto, the sides being the slopes of the main chain with all its broken glaciers, and the western slopes of De la Bêche, whilst the overhanging mist furnished the roof or ceiling. A soft, warm, blue colour pervaded the whole, beautiful beyond expression.
Arriving at the foot of our mountain we commenced the ascent, finding the snow of the ice slopes in a loose and powdery condition, and having to exercise much judgment to avoid precipitating avalanches in the steeper pinches.
We climbed without the rope, rapidly, and alternately in snow and rocks, finding the latter very good—mostly of a red sandstone on which the nails of our boots took good hold. Looking now and then at the aneroid, we began to feel confident of making the ascent and returning to our camp by nightfall. But it was not to be, for, at an altitude of 8,100 feet, we were brought up by a very bad bergschrund and ridge of rocks succeeding it.
To the unlearned in Alpine parlance perhaps an explanation of the nature of a bergschrund is necessary. At the upper termination of nearly all highly situated ice slopes there almost invariably occurs between the rocks above, or between the ice slope and the permanent clinging ice above, a large gap or crevasse, partially filled or bridged with new snow during the winter months, but more open as the warmth of spring and summer causes the snow to melt and the ice to shrink away.
This crevasse or gap is called a bergschrund, and occasionally one may find in it places where the ice ​nearly or quite touches the rocks or ice of the upper side, or sometimes a sound snow bridge may be discovered. These bridges afford the only means of crossing wide bergschrunds. At the place in question a sharp ridge of ice, the lower lip of the bergschrund, led on to a frail snow bridge with a dip of some six feet or so in the centre, over a bottomless abyss some fifteen feet wide.
Dixon cut steps along the ice ridge, having first to remove a foot of fresh snow from the surface, and then we walked this novel tight rope, the bergschrund on our left and steep ice slopes on our right, and crossed the bridge in safety to a small ledge of ice where there was only just room for three to stand. Could we proceed? The rocks above were very bad and ice-coated. I went at them, clearing the inch or so of ice to get my fingers into chinks in the rock, and 'squirming' up on my stomach, clinging with toes and fingers, and feeling disposed to hang on by my teeth or even by the proverbial eyelids, reached, fifty feet above, the crest of the ridge.
I had been in some queer places in the mountains, but, pardon the use of a colonial expression, this one decidedly 'took the cake,' and I shall never forget the start I received when I found myself looking over a sheer upright face of rock on to an unnamed tributary glacier of the Rudolf, 1,000, perhaps 2,000, feet below. I dared not stand up and could scarcely crawl, but lay full length on the steep eastern slope looking over the sharp ridge down the western precipice. On the right, the razor-like arête of rock continued upwards, and seemed almost, if not quite, inaccessible.
Then there was a long-range discussion between ​Dixon and Johnson on the ledge below and myself on the ridge, ending in a decision to descend.
I never to this day can imagine how I came down that fifty feet of rocks without slipping into the crevasse below, but, by the aid of Dixon's directions, I managed to find chinks in the rock-face for the toes of my boots, and reached the ledge to breathe the air of relief once more.
Here we held a council of war. We might, by a traverse of the ice ridge below, gain the rocks again above this bad place; but the summit was yet 2,000 feet above us, the cold so intense that the steel of one's axe would adhere to the hand, the time was fast going, and the photographer and our men would be much concerned if we stayed out another night, besides which we were short of provisions, our original intention having been to stay out but one night. We decided to acknowledge ourselves beaten for the time being and to return to camp.
It goes against the grain with Dixon and me to turn back beaten from a peak. Indeed De la Bêche and Aorangi are the only ones to which we have lowered the colours of our grand old school—Christ's College Grammar School, of Christchurch, New Zealand—and the latter we have since revenged ourselves upon. The former will not run away, and we are nursing a vindictive feeling against this noble triple-topped summit.
Descending very rapidly, glissading now and then in safe places, we reached the foot and struck over the Tasman Glacier again for our camp on the Malte Brun.
Well for us that we had turned from De la Bêche, ​for an hour from camp, Dixon, who had been complaining of not feeling up to the mark for some days and had been lagging—an unusual thing for him—was suddenly seized with violent cramp in the stomach and thighs. We thought at the time it was only temporary, consequent upon great physical exertion and drinking too much snow-water; but unfortunately he did not seem able to shake it off, and we had some difficulty in reaching camp over the maze of crevasses which occur in the glacier just where our Malte Brun Creek enters. Here was a nice state of affairs. One of our best men gone wrong. How about Aorangi next week?
Saturday morning found us 'tuckerless' and hungry, and Dixon worse rather than better.
At 9 a.m. we struck camp and started for the Ball Glacier—really only four hours distant. Whilst taking some views an hour from camp we suddenly heard shouts down the glacier, and found that it was our trusty men, Annan and Low, who, being concerned about our lengthened absence from the lower camp, had come out to look for us.
Johnson, Low, and Annan took the bulk of the swags and started independently for the Ball Glacier, whilst I stayed to follow at a more leisurely pace with Dixon and the photographer. Dixon could only walk for a few minutes at a time and required to rest very frequently, so I sent Cooper on alone, not dreaming for a moment that he could go wrong in such simple ground, where no crevasses to speak of occurred.
It was 5 p.m. ere we arrived at the head-quarters after a gallant struggle on Dixon's part. These are the times which test a man's capabilities, these are the ​trials of endurance to which the unfortunate who chances to be taken ill in these Alpine regions is subjected, and it was a great relief to all to see the afflicted one struggle bravely into camp.
But a new trouble arose. There was no photographer, and he ought to have turned up long ago. Johnson set out to look for him, and after an absence of an hour I was just putting up a swag of mackintoshes, provisions, &c., prepared to spend the night photographer-hunting on the glacier, when Johnson's figure appeared against the sky on the crest of the lateral moraine, shortly followed by that of the missing man, who had wandered down past the camp instead of turning off at the right place. Low and Annan had gone down the valley, and were to come up next day with more provisions.
The next day being Sunday, we decided to have a day's well-earned rest. Messrs. Brodrick and Sladden, of the Survey Department, came up with Annan and Low to dinner, bearing with them medical comforts for the use of our invalid.
As there were still some dry plates left unexposed. Cooper and I went out about 10 a.m. and climbed to a height of 1,000 feet above the camp, on the Ball Glacier spur, from whence we secured a panoramic view on four plates of the glacier and the mountains opposite.
From this point, seeing Aorangi looking so grand, we pushed on up the ridge, intending to secure an exposure from a high altitude. Upwards we climbed, and the further we went the more I was lured on towards the main southern ridge of the mountain. I ​even conceived the idea of making a pass over to the Hermitage viâ the Hooker Glacier. But the work became more difficult, and we got into patches of snow and were unfortunately without our ice-axes. This made our progress more slow and cautious. Still we pushed forward, the scene becoming grander at every step.
At length the light began to fade, and I saw that to get an exposure of the peak from the main ridge was hopeless, so Cooper unlimbered his instrument and I pushed on alone, determined to reach the saddle, at least, and see over to the other side. Reaching the final snow—that covering the actual head of the Ball Glacier, which had been below us on our right all the day—I sped across it as fast as I could go, and keeping a sharp look-out for indentations indicating covered crevasses, reached the rocks of a peak situate a little south of the saddle of the Ball Glacier. Crawling over a snow bridge spanning the bergschrund, which crumbled uncomfortably under me as I laid hold of the rocks on the upper side, after a short scramble I attained the summit.
How shall I tell of the view southwards which met my astonished gaze? How describe the glorious sunset effects? Life is not long enough to attempt it.
I was on the nameless peak south of the Ball Glacier saddle at an altitude of 7,540 feet—the highest peak south of the great majestic mass of Aorangi himself, who towered up for another 5,000 feet above me.
I quote from Mr. Green to give some idea of what he thought of our mountains from this point:—
'Deep down below us lay the Hooker Glacier, ​reminding us of the downward view from the arête of the Finsteraarhorn, while beyond, the glacier-seamed crags of Mount Sefton towered skywards.
'Further off lay the mer de glace of the Mueller Glacier, a splendid field of white ice, its lower moraine-covered termination lost in the blue depths of the valley at our feet. The high ridge connecting Mount Sefton with Mount Stokes alone prevented us from seeing the western sea. It was a glorious day, scarcely a breath of air stirring; no cloud visible in the whole vault of blue; ranges upon ranges of peaks in all directions and of every form, from the iced-capped dome to the splintered aiguille. It was a wonderful sight, those lovely peaks standing up out of the purple haze; and then to think that not one had been climbed! Here was work, not for a short holiday ramble merely, not to be accomplished even in a life-time, but work for a whole company of climbers, which would occupy them for half a century of summers, and still there would remain many a new route to be tried. Here, then, we stood upon the shoulder of the monarch of the whole mountain world around us, within less than 5,000 feet of his icy crown, but a long, jagged, ice-seamed ridge lay in our path. Was it accessible? Let us see!'
It was not accessible, as anyone who has read Mr. Green's interesting book will know, and I could see from my standpoint very plainly that Mr. Green, with Emil Boss and Ulrich Kaufmann—two of the finest mountaineers in the world—could not do otherwise than accept a defeat.
Just such a scene as Mr. Green describes I saw, ​only that its mystic beauty was intensified by the soft glow of evening as the sun sank lower and lower, at last dipping behind a bank of crimson clouds hanging over a saddle to the westward.
I seemed spellbound and almost riveted to the spot, and could only tear myself away when I realised the awkward position of the photographer and myself, trapped, as it were, by the fast-closing darkness, 4,000 feet above our camp, with all sorts of climbing difficulties below. Clambering down the rocks and jumping the bergschrund, away I sped over the névé slopes, and reaching Cooper after an hour's absence, found him just packing up his camera.
It is too long a story to tell of all our troubles and adventures in getting down the mountain in the dark; letting ourselves down on to the rocks, scraping our hands on sharp edges, plunging knee-deep in soft snow, following false ridges terminating in precipices down to the Ball Glacier below, retracing our erring steps, and at last coming to vegetation again; then going down off the ridge towards the Tasman, trying to hit the head of a long shingle slip I was acquainted with, hearing 2,000 feet above the camp the first 'cooee' from our anxious mates below, and getting down eventually at half-past ten, ravenous, and almost torn to pieces by the sharp rocks, Spaniards, and scrub.
Johnson—always self-denying and considerate for others—was out photographer-hunting again, having gone on to the Ball Glacier and shouted himself hoarse; he arrived back in camp at 1 a.m. (having been guided home by a fire which I had kept going on the ​moraine since our return), after having experienced a fruitless hunt of eight hours over rough rocks and ice. This finished the photography, and on the following day Cooper and Low went down to the Hermitage. A finer week for securing negatives could not have been wished for, and the thirty exposures resulted in the best set of mountain views yet obtained in New Zealand.
Now ensued a few days' rest, Dixon, Johnson, and I being left in camp with a week's provisions and designs on Aorangi, when Dixon should have recovered his strength.
Only one short excursion did Johnson and I make, to see if it were possible to reach the Great Plateau from the eastern buttress of the mountain, and so save crossing the Hochstetter Glacier and climbing the Haast Ridge beyond. Our endeavours were fruitless, for at a height of some 6,300 feet we were brought up by a high wall of rock. I still think, nevertheless, that the plateau could be reached in this manner when a good deal of snow fills the rocky couloirs or ditches which in places descend in this wall of rock. Should this be so, it will no doubt prove to be the route of the future for reaching the Linda Glacier and Aorangi.
The rock-climbing here, however, is very dangerous, as the frost has split the rocks up in all directions. One small stone thrown down from above sufficed to start many tons of loose matter in the couloirs, which rattled down to the glacier below, sending up clouds of dust in its descent.