No résumé of the work done in the Southern Alps would be complete without reference to the magnificent survey work and the measurements of glacier flow made by Mr. T. N. Brodrick, C.E., of the New Zealand Survey Department.
Mummery in his delightful book about his climbs in the Alps and Caucasus says, humorously, that a mountain passes through three phases, “An inaccessible peak,” “The most difficult climb in the Alps,” and “An easy day for a lady.” His classification has been proved true in regard to the New Zealand as well as the European Alps, and Mount Cook, which baffled Green and his Swiss experts and the early New Zealand climbers, has now been climbed by two women. Miss Du Faur, a Sydney girl, in 1911 made the ascent by the Hooker Rock route in company with the two guides Peter and Alex. Graham, while Mrs. Lindon, an Englishwoman resident in Australia, a year later, with Peter Graham and D. Thomson, made the ascent of Mount Cook by Green’s more difficult route. The conditions for both ascents were perfect. Miss Du Faur has also climbed Mount Tasman (11,475 feet), Mount Dampier (11,323 feet)—a first ascent—and several other peaks. This season (1912-13), in company with Graham and Thomson, she has succeeded in making a traverse of the three peaks of Mount Cook from a high bivouac on the Hooker side to the bivouac on the Tasman side—a remarkable feat. On this trip the climbers were favoured with glorious weather, and the conditions were also good; otherwise the climb would have been almost hopeless. The writer has looked down the long icy knife edge that, with its bends and steep slopes and cornices, joins the three peaks together, and has realized the almost insuperable difficulties in the way of success, except under ideal conditions. All honour, then, to the two New Zealand guides and the young Australian girl who have accomplished such a daring feat.
In connexion with this brief historical résumé of mountain climbing in New Zealand and looking back over this series of victories, won without a single fatal accident, it remains only to pay a tribute—and it must be a very high tribute—to the members of the Alpine Club, whose precept and example we have so closely followed. When I first started climbing, the Rev. Mr. Green sent me an ice-axe and an article on the death-roll of the Alps! What two more appropriate things could he have forwarded to an amateur anxious to learn the craft in a Far Country? I still have the axe—a treasured possession—but I have long ago lost the article! And it occurs to me, now, that by the reader of these pages it may be laid to our charge that in some of our expeditions we did not err on the side of timidity. My answer to that will be that we were always, or nearly always, doing pioneer work, and so had to discover the dangers as well as the routes, and that, generally, when the weather failed, when the avalanches began to hiss down the slopes or crash from the cliffs, or when the rocks began to fall, we either waited or turned tail and fled. But, in any case, the most critical would, surely, not have had us run no risks at all. He is a poor soul—and there can be no pride of race in him—who will shirk all danger. Two years ago it was my privilege—at the invitation of my friend Lord Islington—to give a lecture at Government House, Wellington, before a famous historian and ambassador who is one of a long line of distinguished presidents of our Club, and, at the close of the lecture, he—in one of those charming speeches which he so easily makes—emphasized the necessity for the caution that I myself had been preaching. But afterwards, at supper, his wife came to me and said, “I like my husband’s preaching to you about caution! Why, when he climbed Ararat his only companion was his ice-axe!” But she said it with a smile, and with what I judged to be a feeling more of pride than of reproach. So you see this fondness for a spice of danger is in the blood, and cannot be altogether eliminated in the old country any more than in the new. And I will even go the length of saying that it will be a sorry day for the race when it is no longer a feature of British character.
Mount Cook has now been climbed by four routes. It has been traversed from east to west over the highest summit, and along the ridge from south to north. The first ascent was made by New Zealanders who had never seen a guide at work, and all the other ascents but one have been made with guides who have learnt their craft, untaught by others, in their native land. All the high peaks have now been climbed, with or without guides, Zurbriggen being the only foreign guide who has ever stood on the summit of a New Zealand Alp. And during all these years there has been no fatal accident to mar the tale of success. But what of the future? It is scarcely to be expected that this immunity from accident will continue indefinitely. There may come a day when some climber, caught in bad weather, or endeavouring to achieve the impossible by some new and more daring route, will meet his fate on the higher snows, or leave his bones among the beetling crags of the great precipices. One can only express the hope that such a day may be long delayed, and that, for many years to come, the steep white slopes, the grim precipices, and the towering peaks will continue as a health-giving playground, and resound with the laughter born of the fun and frolic of the hardy mountaineer. And whatever the future history of these mountains may be, it can scarcely provide a tale of more absorbing interest than is furnished by the manly struggles of the pioneers who have climbed, with some fair measure of success, in a Far Country.
CHAPTER II
IN THE OLDEN DAYS
“The bed was made, the room was fit,
By punctual eve the stars were lit;