With Axe and Rope in the New Zealand Alps

by George Edward Mannering

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.

AORANGI FROM THE BALL GLACIER

[Wheeler & Son, Photo.

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.