A climber in New Zealand

by Malcolm Ross

Christina Rossetti.

In the days when we first visited the Mount Cook region we thought De la Bêche would be an easy mountain to climb. But our youthful eagerness and inexperience led us into some difficult situations, and then we began to think it was a difficult mountain to climb. In after years one was apt to smile at the recollection of those early attempts, which, try we ever so bravely, always ended in failure, and moved us to sadness. Yet, if they had to be made over again, one would not have it otherwise; for, notwithstanding our disappointments, we had great fun, and we really could climb. It was our knowledge of route-finding that was at fault. That knowledge has to be learnt slowly in the hard school of experience. Fyfe was the first to acquire it, and after that the rest was comparatively easy. The great peaks went down one by one—Cook, De la Bêche, the Minarets, Malte Brun, Darwin, and the Footstool. Fitzgerald bagged three of the finest—Tasman, Sefton, and Haidinger; and, later on, the small band of West Coast climbers—Newton, Teichelman, and Low—conquered others.

It was in 1893 that we first turned our steps towards De la Bêche and the Minarets. De la Bêche had attracted the attention of the Rev. Mr. Green, and as far back as 1889 Mannering, Dixon, and Johnston had had a shot at it. In all, some four attempts to scale it had been made before our arrival on the scene. Early in January of the year named, Fyfe and I swagged bedding and provisions up to the Bivouac Rock. This rock is a historic spot in connexion with New Zealand mountaineering. Many of the early climbers have starved and shivered there, but seldom have they waxed fat on a plethora of provisions. I recall especially one jolly expedition when my wife and I and four others used it as an habitation for some days, and I can still see Wilson of Glasgow and my wife vainly endeavouring to cook something hot for supper with what remained of our methylated spirit and the oil from a tin of sardines! That supper was not quite a success. But, later on, one warm summer’s night, after a jolly meal, we sat up singing songs and telling stories till midnight, when we saw the New Year in, and then crept reluctantly into our sleeping bags for the rest of the night.

De la Bêche Bivouac.

Here, too, it was that Mr. R. S. Low was found in 1908, almost unconscious, after his accident on the descent from Graham’s Saddle, and after one of the most marvellous feats of physical endurance in the history of Alpine climbing. While descending the couloir near the Kron Prinz Rudolf Ice Fall he slipped and fell. He succeeded in driving his ice-axe into the slope, and it held; but a heavy knapsack that he was carrying threw him off his balance at the critical moment, with the result that he shot down the couloir for some 20 or 30 feet on to some jagged rocks. The shock was so severe that he rebounded on to the most dangerous part of the couloir, with a clear slide of 200 feet leading down to a bergschrund about 20 feet wide and of unknown depth. His knapsack apparently gripped against the slope, and he was able to get a hand-hold on an isolated strip of rock jutting out from the snow. He dragged himself on to these rocks with a badly dislocated ankle, a lacerated knee, and minor wounds, and lay there for hours in a semi-conscious state. Late in the afternoon, when the snow slopes were soft, with the boot removed from his injured and now swollen foot, Mr. Low started on what was the most perilous part of the whole descent. Unable to ascend to get his ice-axe, he used his left knee on the slope, and kicked steps in the snow with his right foot. In this way he made two traverses down the slope and crossed two snow bridges and the bergschrund at the foot of the couloir. He then crawled to a piece of light moraine on the lower portion of the glacier. Here he passed the first night, endeavouring to stanch the bleeding and to cover his wounds with adhesive plaster. On the following day (Thursday) he decided to make for the Bivouac Rock. He expected to reach it before nightfall. Tying a 30-foot piece of rope to his knapsack, he lay on his back on the snow and used his hands and his sound foot to propel himself to the rope limit. Having gone so far, he would drag the knapsack up to him and then proceed as before. This mode of progression was fairly satisfactory so long as the smooth going lasted, but on reaching the hummocky ice and the rough moraine lower down the glacier he was again forced to crawl on his hands and knees. Towards evening he crawled to the lee side of the biggest rock he could find. Next day (Friday) it rained and hailed, and finally snowed to a depth of two feet, making it impossible for him to move. On the Saturday, however, he started off again and accomplished the most marvellous performance of crawling on his hands and knees through newly fallen snow over the rough and broken surface of the moraine-covered glacier, between crevasses and over ice bridges, thence for 300 feet up the steep face of the lateral moraine, and finally down a ridge of broken loose rocks to the Bivouac. Here he remained for six days. His dislocated ankle was much swollen and very painful, and the skin and flesh were considerably worn from his knees. Each day he became weaker for want of food, as the one day’s food that he carried had to last him ten days. At last he had reduced himself to two pinches of cocoa a day. Fortunately there were a few pieces of short board at the Bivouac, and out of these he improvised a crutch, so that he was able to get about sufficiently to obtain water by melting snow on the rocks.

It was not till the Friday that the people at the Hermitage knew that Mr. Low was missing. On the West Coast a search party was immediately organized, and the two young New Zealand Alpine guides, Jack Clark and Peter Graham, at once set out from the Hermitage, and arrived at the De la Bêche Bivouac at 4 a.m. on Saturday, March 3. There they found Mr. Low alive, but in a very weak condition. They at once released a carrier pigeon they had brought with them, with a brief message to the manager at the Hermitage for medical aid. In case of any misadventure to the pigeon, Guide Clark dispatched a man to the Hermitage with the news. On the Monday Mr. Low was carried down to the Ball Glacier Hut. This was a terribly arduous undertaking, as the Tasman Glacier at this point is very much crevassed and broken up into large hummocks, while, lower down, the Hochstetter and Ball Glaciers and some enormous moraines had to be crossed. Next day (Tuesday) the guides improvised a comfortable couch with a sheet of galvanized iron, a mattress, and some pillows, and, this being placed on a stout pack-horse, Mr. Low was taken across the Hooker River for twelve miles to the coach road. Thence he was conveyed by road and rail to Timaru, and, subsequently, to Christchurch, where, after an operation and skilful treatment, he began gradually to recover. I had the pleasure of sitting beside him at the Alpine Club dinner in London the other evening, and he told me he had been rock-climbing in Wales! And yet there are some pessimists who will tell you to-day that the young Briton is becoming decadent! I did not mean to write anything about all this—and I am afraid Mr. Low will not forgive me for having done so—but the incident is of historic interest, and no chronicle of De la Bêche and its Bivouac Rock would be complete without some reference to it.

It was on January 3, 1893, that Fyfe and I reached the rock. It was a glorious evening, with not a breath of air stirring, and the warm sun streaming down into the valley loosened the séracs of a fine glacier opposite, sending avalanche after avalanche thundering down over the precipices on to the Kron Prinz Rudolf Glacier below. We raked up the gravel under the rock, and having levelled it somewhat and scooped out small holes for our hips in order that we might be more comfortable, we spread the tent and one blanket for a mattress, leaving another double blanket for a covering. Just in front of us, above our Bivouac Rock, was the main spur of De la Bêche, and at the foot of it the lateral moraine of the Kron Prinz Rudolf, with six or seven older and higher moraines, some four or five of which had plants growing on them. The Kron Prinz itself, near where it joins the Tasman, was very much broken, and its ice was black with morainic débris. Across this glacier we looked on to the lower cliffs of the main range, over which rock avalanches frequently fell. Above were visible some fine peaks, and the upper portions of two or three unnamed glaciers. More to the left, in the direction of Mount Cook, could be seen glacier after glacier,—the Forrest Ross, the Kaufmann, the Haast, the Freshfield, the Hochstetter, and Ball all being visible,—while down the centre of the valley we looked for miles over the white billowy ice of the Tasman to the opposite range far beyond its terminal face. One great rock on the lateral moraine of the Tasman just above us seemed to menace our safety, but a closer examination showed that it was firmly poised and likely to retain its position for a year or two at all events.

The evening continued fine, and we sat at the mouth of our cave watching the sun illumining the higher snows as it sank slowly behind the bold outline of Mount Haidinger, and listening to the avalanches thundering down from the glacier. Far away down the valley a bank of sun-lit mist continued for a while above the Hochstetter Ice Fall, and while we sat and watched the lighter wreaths mysteriously appearing and vanishing on the highest peak of Aorangi, the last gleam of sunlight slowly stole away.