With Axe and Rope in the New Zealand Alps

by George Edward Mannering

Once again we plunged into all those pleasures and joys of mountaineering. Again we felt the clear ice of the beautiful Hochstetter Glacier crunch under our iron-shod feet. Now we were away from all the hum-drum cares of life, from the misery of flooded camps, in the free mountain air, with the stupendous ice-falls and the majestic peaks all around. We seemed to breathe a heavenly atmosphere, to live a new life in another and a better world. Where is the man who can come into contact with these surroundings and not be better in body and soul?

We reached the foot of the Haast Ridge by 9.30, and here we debated as to whether we should tackle Aorangi after all, or try De la Bêche, further up the glacier (which peak would be an easier ascent and command a magnificent view of both eastern and western glacier systems). Aorangi it was, however, we had come to tackle, and so, again shouldering our swags, we went at the ridge.

We kept to the crest of the spur and found the climbing very simple, for a thousand feet amongst lilies and snow-grass; but after that the real business amongst rotten and precipitous rock ridges and faces commenced, and we had to put on the rope. At this time none of us were very proficient in the use of the rope, but we soon began to value the assistance it affords and to appreciate the assurance it inspires.

It was not until 5 p.m. that we reached the top of the ridge, where we soon discovered Green’s bivouac, not far from which spot we determined to spend the night.

All the way up we had been climbing with the Hochstetter ice-fall on our left, and had been favoured with the grandest views of Aorangi, which looked absolutely impregnable; but as our view of the Linda Glacier and the Great Plateau was shut off by the upper part of the Haast Ridge, we could not see the route which we were bent on following.

Here I may remark that the route by which Mr. Green, and subsequently Dixon and myself climbed the mountain cannot be seen from any distant point. I refer, of course, to the upper part of the route above the Haast Ridge. Even the plateau is so shut in as to be invisible from any distant point, except from the peaks of the Malte Brun Range on the opposite side of the valley.

Scraping away all the larger stones from under an overhanging rock and building a semicircular break-wind, we dug holes for our hips (one gets very sore in hard beds of this nature if such a precaution be neglected), wriggled into our blanket-bags, boiled a pannikin of Liebig, and slept like tops till the morning.

The rosy fingers of the morn had just opened the gates of day as our heads emerged from the apertures of our bags, and showed one of the most magnificent panoramas of Alpine wonder which it has been my lot to view.

Three thousand feet below us lay the Tasman Glacier with its marvellous stream of pure ice, on our right the Hochstetter ice-fall, on which we could look down and view with wonder its chaos of séracs and crevasses, the ice-clad precipices of Aorangi rising heavenwards from it in bold ruggedness. Down the valley to the south-west the grey moraine, with the meandering river still further afield. Across the valley the rocky peaks of the Liebig and Malte Brun Ranges with their hanging glaciers, and right opposite to us Malte Brun himself, a pyramid of red rock, flanked by ice and snow slopes, standing out clearly against the morning sky like a great grim castle, and looking quite safe from any assault of man—on this side at all events. Following round the panorama to the northwards, Mount Darwin sends its one great glacier sweeping down into the main stream; then the Hochstetter Dome stands at the head of the Tasman Glacier itself, and westward rise the noble summits of Mounts Elie de Beaumont, Green, and De la Bêche—the last a most beautiful triple peak, queen of the whole group, and over 10,000 feet in height. Still following round, the eye falls on the Rudolf Glacier descending from the peak of the same name, then Mounts Jervois, Spencer, Glacier Peak, and lastly Mount Haidinger, a fine flat-topped mountain clothed from base to summit in broken ice.

Behind us lay Mount Tasman (11,475 feet), invisible over the higher parts of the spur on which we were now situated. From our coign of vantage we counted twenty-five tributary glaciers of the Tasman, some with ice-falls, others joining with graceful curve.