Here we camped in a snug hollow between the lateral moraines of the Tasman and Rudolf Glaciers. Small shingle composed our bed, and a snow patch close by provided us with water, which we boiled in our ‘Aurora’ stove, as no firewood was to be found so far up the glacier.
PEAKS ON MALTE BRUN
[Wheeler & Son, Photo.
A fine Friday morning found us at a quarter to seven on the rope, and making hard work of it amongst the crevasses of the Tasman Glacier.
I remember well how we resorted to all sorts of dodges to get over the difficulties, taking the snow slopes of the mountain sides here, cutting a few steps there, even going to the length of climbing down into crevasses and crawling under ice blocks. But eventually we passed the worst of the crevasses, and made good time over the smooth, snow-covered surface of the glacier.
The distance from our De la Bêche camp to the saddle must be about six or seven miles, but in the soft and treacherous snow it seemed more like sixty or seventy.
The glare was something dreadful, and soon our faces and hands were of the peculiar chocolate colour which invariably comes under such circumstances. We could not bear the goggles off for an instant. Gradually we rose as we plodded away, now and then stepping over an open crevasse or making a détour to find snow bridges. There are but few crevasses, however, for several miles, only when in the proximity of the saddle where the gradient increases they once more begin to occur.