With Axe and Rope in the New Zealand Alps

by George Edward Mannering

It is no easy task after climbing steadily for nine hours in soft snow to set to work and cut steps, especially when one knows that a slip must on no account be made, for with two men only on the rope it would mean a sudden descent to the crevasses or precipices (as the case may be) below, and our certain destruction.

An hour’s steady work and we gained the foot of the lowest rocks, which were found to be quite unscalable. We then sidled round the base of these rocks to the left and commenced cutting steps up the first couloir, keeping close into the rocks on our right, on which we could get an occasional hand-grip. Ice blocks were continually coming down from the broken masses overhanging the top of the couloir, but luckily none struck us. The descent of an ice block in such steep ice slopes is something to remember. First a rattle above, and then ‘swish, swish’ as the first leaps begin, followed by a ‘whir-r-r-r’ and a ‘hum-m-m-m’ as, like a flash of light, a spinning and ricochetting object goes by and is lost to sight over the brink of the precipice below, or perchance is detected spending its momentum on the soft snow slopes 1,000 feet down.

These falls of ice on the upper slopes are not like the hissing avalanches, which sometimes even crawl down the lower snow slopes, but come down with the speed of light, and are calculated to strike terror into the heart of the stoutest-nerved climber.

We crossed the couloir near its head, partly on ice and partly on rocks, amid the gravest peril from showers of ice, and took to the rocks on our left, which were both dangerous and difficult, mainly owing to their being here and there coated with ice. Soon they became quite inaccessible, and we were again forced towards our left on to the ice slopes in the second couloir, and here we found the ice even harder, and we could only make an impression on it with the spike end of our axes. To add to the difficulty, the angle of ascent became steeper, inclining in places to about 60° from the horizontal.

We negotiated this couloir in a similar manner to that below, but water trickling from the overhanging rocks formed awkward hummocks of ice on the slope close to the rocks, over which we thought it almost impossible to climb, and to go out into the middle of the couloir was impossible, owing to falling ice.

Time was quickly passing, and we had a terrible fight to reach the head of the couloir. The rocks now shaded us from the sun’s rays, and soon our hats, coats, and the rope were frozen as stiff as boards, while the cold was so intense as to cause the skin of our hands to adhere to the steel of the ice-axes.

It seemed now more than ever a hopeless task to reach the final ice-cap, which we knew could not be far above us; but we silently and doggedly cut away, and at length were rewarded by finding the rocks on our right practicable; taking to them we were soon on their crest, and the ice-cap of the mountain lay straight before us. An easy bit of rock-climbing led up to the slopes, which we found to be covered with a peculiar form of lumpy and frozen drifted snow. At the top of the rocks we looked around in vain for Mr. Green’s cairn, with his handkerchief and Kaufmann’s matchbox, left on the occasion of their ascent in March 1882. Doubtless they have either been long since swept away by falling ice or were buried in the terminal of the ice slope, which in December would encroach farther down upon the rocks than in March.

Dixon now counselled a retreat, arguing that we had virtually overcome all the difficulties and had only the final and easy slope to cut up; but I persuaded him to stay a little longer and make a push for it, or at least as much of a push as we were capable of making.