Occasionally there would be a bit of crag work, and at last we entered a long snow couloir up which we kicked steps in the direction of the Bivouac. This couloir got steeper at the top, and Dixon, thinking to make better progress, took to the rocks on the right, while Kenneth and I tried the rocks on the left. Preferring the snow work, we were soon back in the couloir, and lost sight of Dixon. A quarter of an hour later a jodel from us brought forth an answering shout from below, and presently Dixon’s head appeared above a pinnacle of rock on our right. The spare rope which he had in his swag had been taken out and was now coiled round his shoulder, so we knew he had been in difficulties. Making a traverse of the snow slope, he was soon in our steps, and we learned that he had got into rather an awkward corner, from which he had to descend by means of the Alpine rope. The snow slope above grew steeper and then eased off on to steep rocks, up which lay the route. Dixon led and Kenneth followed, but was quickly in difficulties, for the long “ski” which were attached to his swag would, in spite of everything, catch in the rocks, rendering the situation risky, and the language even more so.
It will perhaps be well to draw a veil over the various acrobatic feats that we performed, and round off the story by stating that we reached the Bivouac Rock at 5 p.m. Under the lee of this rock we found a little flat place, about six feet square, on the crest of a narrow, exposed ridge. On the one side a snow couloir, some 2000 feet long, sloped steeply down between the precipices to the foot of the Hochstetter Ice Fall. Northwards the ridge fell away toward the Tasman Glacier. The scenery was magnificent. Immediately above our camp were some splintered towers of rock, from which is obtained a glorious view of the upper slopes of Aorangi. Northward Haast and Haidinger, clothed with sérac and ice-fall, tower high in heaven; and thence the eye wanders round to De la Bêche—most beautiful of mountains—Elie de Beaumont, and the magnificent sweep of the Upper Tasman, leading to the Lendenfeld Saddle and the Hochstetter Dome. Across the valley were the giant rock peaks of the Malte Brun Range, catching the rosy tint of dying day; and below our Bivouac the battlements of the long rocky ridge leading down to the deep valley in which the middle portion of the great Tasman Glacier, with its streams of moraine and white ice, stretched itself in the deepening gloom of evening.
Dixon expected to find the Bivouac snowed up so early in the season, and he had carried up a short-handled shovel with a view to digging out the cache of provisions left there the previous season. To our joy, however, it was found almost entirely free from snow, and the tinned meats, fish, etc., to all appearance, in good order.
Kenneth and I now divided the swags and got out some provisions for a snack, while Dixon went up over the rocks in an unsuccessful search for water. We had arrived rather late in the day, and no rock could be found retaining sufficient heat from the sun’s rays to melt the snow we spread on it. The result was that Dixon returned with only about an inch of water in the billy. This we apportioned, and, at 7.30 p.m., once more shouldered our swags and started on the climb to the Glacier Dome. But it was now found that the snow was frozen so hard that we should have to cut steps in it all the way to the Dome, and as we saw no prospect of being able to do this with swags on our backs, and to come back for the rest of our burdens in time to make a camp on the great plateau beyond the Dome, we decided to camp for the night at the Bivouac. It was well we did so decide.
As the evening wore on it began to grow cold, so Kenneth and I set about pitching the Whymper tent, while Dixon went on cutting steps up to the Dome to make the ascent the easier in the morning. Owing to the limited space at our disposal, it was rather a difficult matter to pitch the tent satisfactorily, but we made a fairly good job of it, and, getting inside, set about melting some snow over the Aurora lamp to make a cup of Liebig for Dixon. This was rather unpleasant work, as the lamp was out of order and smoked badly. The Primus stove used so effectively in after years in our Alps, and also by my friends Scott and Shackleton in the Antarctic, were not then on the market in N.Z. Our lamp smoked and went out, and was relit, and smoked and went out again. The one thing it seemed incapable of was the generation of heat! Finally, the whole thing caught fire, and in order to avoid an explosion we threw it outside and extinguished the flames in the snow. Luckily I had with me a small spirit lamp, and, though it was not made for burning kerosene, we managed, by the aid of this, to melt some snow and brew three small pannikins of Liebig. Then we sat down and waited patiently for Dixon’s return. About half-past nine we began to feel a little anxious, and I was just getting on my boots to go out and look for him when we heard the clink of his ice-axe on the rocks above the tent. He had been gone two and a half hours, and had done good work. He was rewarded with the Liebig that had been kept warm for him for three-quarters of an hour, and then we, all three, turned into our sleeping bags, intending to make a very early start in the morning. We talked over our plans, and arranged, finally, to carry heavy swags up over the Glacier Dome and on to the plateau, camping eventually on the ice of the Linda Glacier at an altitude of about 10,000 feet above sea-level. Should there be any danger of avalanches from Mount Tasman in crossing the plateau, we decided to travel by night and select a safe camp in the daytime. The mountain was, however, singularly free from avalanches, and we began to think our chances of scaling the peak were of the rosiest.
CHAPTER V
THE CONQUERING OF AORANGI—continued
“It thunders, and the wind rushes screaming through the void,
The night is black as a black stone.”