On our right rises up the bold and verdure clad snow-topped Mount Cook Range, Mount Wakefield (6,561 feet), Mount Mabel (6,868 feet), Mount Rosa (6,987 feet), and a nameless peak (7,540 feet) being the principal points of interest. On our left is the northern continuation of the ridge of Mount Sefton, known as the Moorhouse Range, part of the main chain of the Southern Alps. Several secondary glaciers descend from the slopes, but do not reach the bed of the valley below, which is filled from side to side with the Hooker Glacier.
Proceeding up the surface of the glacier we get on to the clear ice, and now on either bank the mountains rise to a great height. On the right Aorangi suddenly rears itself, from a point known as the Ball Saddle (7,500 feet), to 12,349 feet in one stupendous rocky ridge, upon which the ice hangs wherever it can get any hold. This ridge is known to climbers as the Great Southern _arête_, and has been found, first by Mr. Green and secondly by myself, to be inaccessible. Right ahead of us pour down from the highest crags the Mona, Noeline, and Empress Glaciers, to join the Hooker, alternating with very precipitous rocky ridges which present every appearance of being quite unscalable.
Several attempts have been made by surveyors and others to reach the saddle at the head of the Hooker, but it was only in December 1890 that the efforts of two climbers (Mr. A. P. Harper and Mr. R. Blakiston) were rewarded. The expedition can only be attempted with any chance of success in the early part of the season, when the numberless crevasses are yet covered with the winter snow.
From the Hooker Glacier we turn our faces downwards to the south again, and pay a visit to the north-eastern branch of the main Tasman Valley.
Crossing the Hooker River at the terminal point of the Mount Cook Range, where a cage swung on a wire rope over the river now facilitates the traveller’s passage, we strike north-eastwards up the valley.
For a distance of four miles our way leads over the shingle and boulder flats of the Tasman river-bed, here some two miles wide. Patches of good sheep-feed consisting of tussock and cocksfoot grass (the latter sown by an early settler) occur on the western side of the valley, but the river as a rule washes the opposite slopes.
AORANGI: MOUNT COOK AND THE HOOKER GLACIER.
[Wheeler & Son, Photo.