With Axe and Rope in the New Zealand Alps

by George Edward Mannering

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.

CROSSING THE HOOKER RIVER

[Wheeler & Son, Photo.

Then the atmospheric effect of the mist hanging over the Rudolf Glacier was most wonderful. Looking up 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.