A climber in New Zealand

by Malcolm Ross

and Dixon sang a song about a juvenile Celestial who had caught a bumble bee, and, taking it for a “Melican butterfly,” put it in the pocket of his pantaloons with disastrous results! As the night wore on there was no abatement of the storm, but rather it seemed to increase in fury. The lightning was wonderfully vivid, the balls of fire being succeeded by a bluish light. The incessant thunder, at each crash, drowned the noise of the storm. It was grand in the extreme. Each moment I expected the rock under which we lay would be splintered by an explosion. “Is this blessed rock quite safe?” I inquired of Dixon, who had spent many nights under it, but never such a one as this. “No—not very,” was the answer. So we pondered quietly and put our trust in Providence, and—the laws of chance! Sleep was out of the question. After some time I looked at my watch by a flash of lightning, and found it was 3 a.m. Snow was falling heavily, and weighing down the weather side and end of the tent. I had magnanimously taken the outside berth, and now I could feel the snow curling up over my head in the slack of the tent outside. I beat it down repeatedly, but, like the pain caused by the peach of emerald hue, “it grew! it grew!” till it was once more arching overhead, and I had to sit up and plant my back defiantly against it. Long before morning it had formed a bank outside the tent four feet high, and, when the welcome dawn appeared, though I was still in a sitting posture, it was once more curling over my head, while Kenneth, who was next the rock, had a small cornice arching over his recumbent form! By this time the water in which we were lying had by some means or other got through into our sleeping bags, and this made matters still more uncomfortable. Peering out through the tent door in the early dawn, we saw the snow still falling, and, below us, an apparently bottomless cauldron of swirling drift. The wind had moderated somewhat and the thunder had ceased, but the situation was anything but reassuring, so we decided to beat a retreat to the lower regions. We breakfasted on cold plum pudding, and, creeping out of our bags, hurriedly packed our swags and got ready for a start. The tent had to be abandoned, as it was frozen to the rocks, and the stones to which the guy-ropes were attached were buried deep in the snow. We were soon roped together and at the top of a steep couloir leading down some three or four thousand feet to the Tasman Valley below us. Attaching the swags to the rope, we attempted to tow them behind us, but, as the snow was soft and the slope steep, this became dangerous work, and we decided to let them slide down the couloir before us. They went off with great rapidity for some 100 feet or so, then bounded over a huge tower of rock that jutted out from the middle of the couloir, and disappeared from view. Relieved of the swags, we proceeded cautiously, going with our faces to the slope as one would come down a ladder, making good anchorage with our ice-axes at every step in case we should start an avalanche. There were one or two nasty places, but nothing happened, and, getting on to easier slopes lower down, we were able to turn round and practically walk down the remainder of the gully. We could find no trace of the swags, and came to the conclusion that they must either have been arrested on the crags above or buried in the soft snow below. We decided to hunt for them on the following day, and wended our way back across the Hochstetter and Ball Glaciers to the lonely hut, defeated but not altogether disheartened. Arrived at the hut, the first thing we did was to get out of our wet clothes; but, as our spare garments were in the lost swags, a new problem presented itself for solution. We made shift with what was at hand. Dixon attired in a bath towel, to which he subsequently added a mackintosh; Kenneth gracefully clad in a grey blanket; myself in an airy costume composed of a short serge frock discarded by a former lady climber, made a fashionable trio such as had never before graced the Ball Hut, and that aroused many a vain longing for my lost camera, which, like our spare clothing, was in the buried swags. Breakfast—after our long spell of thirty hours at the Bivouac, with little to drink, and that little not of the best—was very welcome. At midday we turned into our bunks, and dozed away the afternoon. The weather continued bad, and towards evening we were startled by a large rock which came crashing down the mountain-side in close proximity to the hut, warning us that what with falling stones and the danger of a break in the Ball Glacier a few hundred yards higher up the valley, the said hut was in anything but a safe position. Day closed in, and, one by one, we dozed off again till at about 9.30 p.m. we were aroused by a further noise outside, and in our half-sleepy condition imagined we were going to be bombarded by another rock avalanche. Presently, however, the door opened, and in walked three men with ice-axes, Alpine rope, and other climbing paraphernalia. They proved to be Fyfe and George Graham (members of the N.Z.A.C.) and Matheson (a runholder who had come up to see something of the Great Tasman Glacier). There were now six of us in camp, and it became necessary to modify our arrangements, so we discussed plans, and resolved to make a very early start as soon as the weather cleared.

Sunday was occupied mainly as a day of rest, some necessary preparations in the way of cooking, etc., only being made. Graham constituted himself chef of the Hotel de Ball, and it was not long before the smell of a savoury stew was wafted in through the hut door. Alas for the hopes thus engendered! When we came to eat the stew we found that our cook—with the best of good intentions, no doubt—had dosed the dish liberally with what he believed to be salt, but which he afterwards ascertained to be tartaric acid! Someone suggested that if we now added soda it would counteract the effect of the acid, but we were not in a mood for experiments—so we gave the whole lot to Matheson’s dog, and at the end of the day the dog was still alive! We then made the further distressing discovery that there was no salt in the camp, and for the next three days we had to cook our meat and bake our bread without it. This was not so bad as long as we had soda and acid with which to bake scones, but at last the acid likewise gave out, and we were in a quandary. Dixon suggested citrate of magnesia as a substitute, but I prevailed upon Matheson, whom we made baker-in-chief, to try fruit salts,—a bottle of which we found in the hut,—and this he did with excellent results.

The weather cleared gradually, and by 8.30 a.m. the peaks of the Malte Brun Range were standing out above the top of the moraine, grander than ever, in their tracery of newly fallen snow—their grim precipices, which had slipped their mantle of white, being accentuated by the deep snow in the corries. The barometer had risen a tenth, the wind was from the south, and everything seemed to make for success at last.

As the weather was apparently clear down country, this seemed a fitting opportunity to liberate one of the carrier pigeons lent me by Messrs. B. and F. Hodgkins before leaving Dunedin. Attaching a message, written at the Bivouac, to the bird’s leg, we liberated him at 10 a.m., all hands turning out to give him a “send off.” It was an interesting experiment, as the bird had been taken right into the heart of the Southern Alps, and had to rise from a valley surrounded by mountains of from ten to twelve thousand feet in altitude. He rose gradually to a great height, making ten gyrations in one direction, and then with a sweep round in the opposite direction he seemed to suddenly make up his mind, and, taking a bee-line over the Liebig Range, disappeared in the direction of the coast at Timaru. He reached home at 4.30 p.m., having accomplished the journey in six hours and a half. It may be worth while remarking that when the bird reached Dunedin he was still flying at a very high elevation.

We now waited only for settled weather, as we were a very strong party, and had every confidence in our ability to conquer more than ordinary difficulties. Matheson, our newly formed acquaintance, was ready to join us, and to go with us to the summit if need be; so Dixon nailed up his boots with hobs and clinkers for the ice-work. We went early to bed, and pondered over the chances of success. There was one thing that made our minds uneasy—the amount of newly fallen snow on the higher slopes. This would render climbing difficult, if not dangerous. Still, we could but try, and if there should be any danger we decided to travel at night and camp in the daytime. By this means we should also avoid the terrible glare and heat from the snow slopes of the Upper Linda Glacier.

The people of Australia—who may be taken as able to judge—say there are three hot places—Hay, Hell, and Booligal—and that in the matter of temperature these should be put in the order named! On a cloudless summer day, when the sun beats through the stagnant air and is reflected from the snow and the surrounding slopes, the Linda, in any reliable classification, would probably come in after Hay and before the other place.

It was decided that we should rise on the morrow at 2.30 a.m.; but slumber held the hut till four o’clock, and it was five before we were ready for another start. We had not gone far before the storm descended upon us again, and there was nothing for it but to retreat to the shelter of the hut. Clouds obscured the mountain-tops, and it was snowing at the Bivouac. Disconsolately we marched back, and by the time we had regained our habitation the wind, accompanied by driving hail and snow, was once more sweeping down the valley. It now became a game of patience, but though all this gloomy weather and lack of sunshine was very depressing, we kept up our spirits and determined to set out again on the first opportunity. There was some chance of our running short of provisions, as we were now a large party, and it was arranged that Fyfe should walk down to the Hermitage for bread and tinned meats, while Dixon, Matheson, Graham, and I went to look for the swags, leaving Kenneth in charge of the camp. Accordingly we proceeded once more across the Ball and Hochstetter Glaciers, and on past our lower camp. By the time we got near the Tasman spur the snow was driving round us in blinding gusts, and we had frequently to crouch under a crag, and hold on all we knew to prevent our being blown away. Owing to the heavy snowfall, the whole aspect of the lower portion of the mountain was changed, and we had some difficulty in finding the exact couloir down which we had sent the swags; but at last we reached what we thought was it, and Dixon and Graham proceeded with some difficulty right up to the spot where the swags were seen to disappear over the middle rock. Owing to the great depth of snow, however, no trace of them could be found. Matheson and I searched another couloir to the right, but, not liking the look of it, and knowing there was danger from ice-blocks that occasionally fell from the edge of a glacier at its head, fully a thousand feet above, we beat a retreat to our camp. We halted at our cache at the foot of the Tasman spur, and Matheson knocked over a kea with his ice-axe, simply stunning it and subsequently catching it alive. We afterwards caught another at Green’s Fifth Camp. On our way down the glacier the wind was so violent that we could not stand against it, and it simply blew us before it over the smooth ice, while the driving rain that had now set in drenched us once more to the skin. We got back to camp at half-past one, and Dixon and Graham came in an hour afterwards—cold, hungry, and wet. Kenneth had cooked us a hot dinner, which we thoroughly enjoyed; and once more we turned in to wait for fine weather. That night there was another thunderstorm almost as violent as the one we had experienced at the Bivouac; but the lightning was not so vivid, and the thunder—though one or two peals shook the hut—was not quite so close.

Tuesday, the 13th, was spent in camp; but, the bad weather continuing, we could not get our clothes dry, and again the costumes worn were at all events original, if not conventional. Next morning the ground about the hut was covered to a depth of several inches with snow. Fyfe made his appearance shortly after breakfast, and the result of his foraging expedition was regarded as highly satisfactory, especially as he had brought up a fresh supply of bread and a quantity of salt. We were getting tired of eating mutton without salt, and though the scones that Matheson had baked—with fruit salts in place of soda and acid, which had run short—were excellent, still we welcomed the new supply of bread.