At last came a bright sunny morning, free from any threatening cloud-bank out to sea. We set off hopefully on horseback and rode three miles through the bush to the foot of the glacier. We left the horses to feed along the track, then climbed for three hours up the glacier. Next we lighted a fire among the stones, in a sheltered nook under the steep mountain side, and had lunch and a short spell.
Above its first smooth layers of ice the Fox is tremendously broken into gigantic pinnacles, impossible for climbing, and you are forced to take refuge amongst boulders and slippery rocks at the side. Higher still is the main ice-fall of the Fox—more pinnacles and ridges of ice coming down between the mountains in a wide frozen cascade—almost as magnificent as the great ice-fall on the Franz Josef. We crossed the glacier at the foot of the fall and did not attempt to climb up far among the séracs, but made for the side, and wormed our way up steep gullies through coarse wet grass, and then scrambled along smooth, glacier-worn rocks high above, where we held on carefully to flax, cotton-grass, or any overhanging branch.
Late in the afternoon we came out on the bed of a precipitous creek, and on the further side of it found a small platform, some ten feet by seven, thickly overgrown with rank green grass, open to the glacier on one side, and on the others ringed about closely with many trees. Here we pitched the tent, with a soft floor of ferns and the leafy branches of veronicas, senecios and broadleaf trees. A fireplace of stones was soon built against the mountain side among ferns and biddies, and the wood fire burnt cheerily: it was too cold for sitting outside, so we had dinner inside the tent, looking out at our camp-fire and the dark cliff beyond the noisy creek; later the moon rose, showing the glacier beneath, white in the moonlight.
At 9 p.m. we crawled into our sleeping-bags and slept. We awoke cold during the night, but after warming the tent with a small spirit lamp, we ate slices of currant loaf, and soon went to sleep again. At four-thirty the camp fire was lighted, and at five o'clock we had breakfast. It was an excellent breakfast of tea, bread and butter and delicious nectarine jam, and I even had a boiled egg.
At seven we left our camp and set off up the creek-bed for the summit of Chancellor Ridge. The dawn was clear and cold, with the glacier and forests in cold grey shadow; the sea was a quiet grey, and above the horizon we saw the shadow of the earth in deep blue-grey on a sky of orange. Striking away from the creek across slopes of snow grass, we climbed up rocky ridges, and at about five thousand feet came out on a bare ridge, where I was put on the rope: then on up a steep snowfield, and over a rounded dome of snow where the surface was like pie-crust; next over slippery ice which had a sprinkling of snow, and where steps had to be chipped. Finally we had a stiff climb up the actual summit—a short and steep knob of rock, half concealed by snow; and on the top we found a tiny ledge of grey rock, with streaks of white and green quartz, and scanty green moss clinging to it. The summit is only between seven and eight thousand feet high, in New Zealand hardly to be considered a mountain, still, when we gained it successfully, my guide said briefly: "First lady to reach the summit, I must congratulate you." So we shook hands and were happy.
MOUNT MOLTKE AND VICTORIA GLACIER FROM CHANCELLOR RIDGE.