AN ASCENT OF HAIDINGER
“Swinging there over the world, and not high enough to get a hold on heaven, it makes you feel as if things was droppin’ away from you like.”—Gilbert Parker.
Fyfe arrived at the Bivouac Rock in due course, and we began to think of other plans. It was decided to attempt the ascent of Haidinger by the eastern face. We were not yet in sufficiently good training to do ourselves justice on difficult climbs, and were moreover somewhat tired with the previous day’s exertions. Once more the good resolutions formed at nightfall were dispersed with the dawn, and instead of starting at 3.30 a.m. it was a quarter-past five before we got under way. Crossing the lateral moraines of the Rudolf Glacier, we hurried over the clear ice to the foot of our mountain at a speed that was too fast to be pleasant. I began to wish myself back in my comfortable sleeping bag under the Bivouac Rock. Fyfe was cutting out the pace at an unusual rate, but I set my teeth, followed doggedly in his footsteps, and answered his remarks with the briefest of monosyllables. This, ultimately, had the effect of stifling conversation altogether. In any case, it was too early for talk. But in an hour’s time we had made such excellent progress that we were on the ridge and scrambling up the first rocks, which offered no serious bar to our progress. The sunrise was splendid. Rocks soon gave place to snow, which rose in a gentle curve to a continuation of the rocky arête two or three hundred yards above. Climbing along this ridge, we at length found ourselves face to face with two enormous slabs of rocks, rearing themselves on end above the softer strata, and recognized in them the well-known Penguin Rocks, so plainly visible from the hut at the Ball Glacier, the summit of De la Bêche, and many other points miles away. The close view that we now obtained of them was decidedly interesting. They completely blocked our passage along the crest of the ridge, but we found a way round, and, gaining a safe spot on the other side, where there was room to sit down, we basked awhile in the warm morning sun and enjoyed our second breakfast.
On the right the ridge fell away in a great precipice to the Forrest Ross Glacier, here very steep, and raked by falling rocks and blocks of ice. Waterfalls shot from the edge of the clear ice above, and tumbled, with continuous roar, over the black buttresses of wet rock. The thunder of avalanches also rose on the clear morning air from the depths below. Immediately on our left another glacier flowed down the steep slope, and poured its tribute into the Great Tasman. From the highest rocks on this ridge a hummock of ice rose and curved over our heads, and through a great crack close beside us we peered down into the awesome depths of a bergschrund in the glacier on our left. At the end of this there was a beautiful grotto where the white of the snow and the tender blues and greens of the ice melted away into the gloom that shrouded the depths of the crevasse, and seemed as if it had been transported unsullied through the pure air from Fairyland. All the same it was awesome. I drew Fyfe’s attention to it, and, after we had duly admired its wondrous beauty, he remarked that it would be awkward if we dropped through! Whereat, we took another look, and, sitting, each, on a flat slab of slate placed on top of the snow, began once more to munch our “second breakfast.” Water was trickling from the ice-block above. We caught it in the crowns of our hats, and, squeezing the juice of a lemon into it, enjoyed a delightfully cool and refreshing drink. Then the fragrant incense of tobacco was wafted abroad—wafted abroad on this fantastic ridge for the first time since the world began. And we two sat there in the sunshine, watching the smoke wreaths caught up in the gentle morning airs and carried over the white snow to the base of those two palæozoic giants that frowned disdainfully upon us. Hitherto no one had dared to pass over the ramparts of rock and beyond the portals of ice that guarded their domain.
On top of one of the pinnacles was a weather-worn and lichen-covered boulder that forcibly brought home to our minds the wear and tear of the ages. Clearly, at one time, the ridge had been as high as the top of these rocks, but had, bit by bit, crumbled away, leaving the harder pinnacles, with their solitary coping-stone poised aloft, to tell to the first explorers the tale of the ceaseless warring elements. And perhaps the time may arrive when mountaineering shall have become a lost art, and some highly developed mortal, in the due process of evolution, sailing by in his airship, will halt awhile on this same ridge to find these adamantean giants gone—nay, even a time when these great glaciers shall be no more, and the very ridge itself shall have crumbled into dust. Such has happened before in the world’s history; such will happen again. I am writing this chapter, on a blazing hot day, on board a P. & O. liner in the Arabian Sea, and Priestley, returning from Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition, has just been telling me that they found the fossil wood of fir trees in that land where to-day there is no tree, nor flower, nor herb. And I doubt not that in this same Arabian Sea, where, now, ice is in much request, there were, at one time, great glaciers flowing down from the mainland, and huge bergs drifting aimlessly out to sea. So it may be again, through some change in solar heat, or in the earth’s axis.
But these problems did not greatly concern us on the ridge of Haidinger that morning. We had got our second wind now, and the sunrise, and the beautiful surroundings, found us once more in high spirits, and ready, nay eager, to pit ourselves against the opposing forces of nature. Is it not Quiller-Couch who says, if he were to draw up a hierarchy of sports, he would rank them as they oblige a man to pit himself and take his chances against opposing forces? Such sports have helped to make Britons brave, and if our New Zealand youth engage in them—as a pastime, but not as a business—it will be well, and “danger, when it comes, will not grin suddenly upon them with an unfamiliar face.”
We looked anxiously ahead at the two turreted ridges that came down from the summit of our mountain. The one on the right seemed as if it might give an easy route, but the tracks of falling stones on the glacier below were indicative of danger, and, even as we looked, a great mass of rock broke away with a loud report from the higher crags, and came thundering down to the glacier. The whole face of the rocky buttress was raked with a fire of falling stones, more deadly than the most destructive artillery. The chances were a thousand to one that, had we chosen that route, we should have met with swift and certain death. Without giving this route another thought we bore away to the left over the ice on the plateau, and made for the ridge on the left. We decided to keep to the crest so that we should be safe from falling stones and blocks of ice; but we were still in doubt as to whether we could cross the plateau and gain the rocks on the foot of the ridge. A snow-covered bergschrund met us at the outset, and we crawled cautiously across it, distributing our weight over as great an area as possible. Below us the ice was broken into enormous séracs, and one peak-like pinnacle towered aloft above the surrounding masses. Some of the schrunds were exceptionally large, and the colouring in their depths was marvellously beautiful. It was as if they had been made in some fairyland factory in which the manufacturer had mastered all the arts of delicate colouring and blending of tints.
Having arrived at a comparatively level bit of the plateau, where there were some tremendous cliffs of ice poised above, we ran as fast as possible on to safer ground. Two great schrunds gaped before us at the farther edge of the plateau, but we dodged one and crossed the other gingerly on a frail snow-bridge, one man anchoring till the other was safely over. Then we saw that we should have difficulty in getting on to the main ridge; but a secondary ridge farther down promised success. We turned towards it, and clambering up a soft snow slope, found ourselves once more on solid rocks.
These rocks gave us some interesting climbing, and the main ridge ahead looked practicable. We began to see the West Coast peaks away beyond the Lendenfeld Saddle and the Hochstetter Dome at the head of the Tasman Glacier. The view up and down the Tasman with the startling peaks and precipices of the Malte Brun Range right opposite across the glacier was one that we could not help every now and then halting to admire.
Having climbed over this first ridge, we found ourselves on a very narrow snow arête. There was just room for a man to walk on it. It sloped down steeply on either side, and we agreed that in the event of either slipping, the other would immediately throw himself bodily over on the opposite side, in which case we should find ourselves dangling one at each end of the rope in perhaps a not very elegant pose, but, at all events, in safety. However, there was no need for any such gymnastic performance, and we walked along the snowy ridge without a slip and gained a rock arête. This ridge was still narrower—Fyfe declared it was sharp enough to cut bread with. The rocks were, moreover, very rotten, and the crumbling masses that we sometimes dislodged went clattering down on to the glaciers on either side.