Fyfe and Graham, however, were keenly anxious for me to accompany them, and it was decided, on the day they left for Mount Cook, that I should give my leg a good trial on the Sealy Range, and, if it stood the test, rejoin the party the same evening at the Ball Hut. Accordingly, in company with Professor Baldwin Spencer, Mr. and Mrs. Lindon, and Jack Clark, I went up the Sealy Range. We spent a delightful day, the weather being glorious, and the views of Sefton, Mount Cook, and many other mountains, magnificently grand. My leg stood the test, and I returned to the Hermitage in high glee, feeling confident that another day’s rest at the Mount Cook Bivouac would complete the cure. Accordingly I bade farewell to my friends at the Hermitage, and that evening rode up with Clark, in the moonlight, to the hut. Crossing the dangerous Hooker River, we changed horses, Clark insisting that I should cross on the safer of the two, and giving instructions that I should hold on to his mane if he got bowled over. However, these horses, which are wonderful at crossing rivers, got over safely. Never shall I forget that glorious ride in the moonlight. We galloped over the tussock flats, and then slackened our pace as we entered upon the narrow and uncertain path between the dark spur of Aorangi on our left and the great moraine of the Tasman Glacier that loomed on our right like some titanic jumble of rock-work. The talk was of climbing and climbers, reminiscences of former victories and defeats, glorious days spent amongst the higher snows, and of brave companions who had shared our Alpine joys and sorrows in the years now past. Meanwhile the stars, dimmed by a glorious moon, swung westward o’er our path, the fourteen miles went past like four, and presently, about 10 p.m., we spied the solitary light of the hut window, like a star in the lower darkness, and our cheery jodelling awoke the echoes of the valley and brought an answering shout from Graham and Fyfe. They were glad to see me, and delighted to hear that I was fit to climb again.
On Monday, the 8th January, we ascended to the Bivouac Rock, on the Haast Ridge, from which the early New Zealand climbers made their heroic, though unsuccessful, attacks on the monarch of the Southern Alps. We climbed the steep rocky ridge with heavy swags—tent, sleeping bags, ice-axes, Alpine rope, and provisions for three or four days. Green, a promising climber, came with us in the capacity of porter. It was necessary to shovel the snow from the little stone platform on which we were to sleep, and we had no sooner got camp pitched than the weather changed. Dense clouds, borne on southerly airs, quickly filled the valley, blotting out from view the moraines and icy tongues of the Great Tasman Glacier thousands of feet below. We made a billy of tea, and dined on bread-and-butter and cold mutton, after which Green very reluctantly left us to join Clark and a party at the Malte Brun Hut farther up the glacier. Graham went down with him over the first snow slopes. As he did not return for some considerable time we got rather anxious, and Fyfe went to see what was the matter. Presently he returned with Graham, and we heard Green jodelling from the misty depths thousands of feet below us. We gave him answering jodels from the Bivouac, this interchange of signals being kept up till Green’s voice grew fainter and fainter, and at last we got tired of answering him. Then we made things snug about our eerie perch, and turned in for the night. The four of us were packed like sardines in a tin, but, with our clothes on, in the eider-down sleeping bags, and under the shelter of my Whymper tent, with its waterproof floor, we were fairly warm and comfortable. Those of us who were smokers lit our pipes and were happy. Then the clouds that had overwhelmed the ridge began to patter-patter on the tent roof in gentle rain, which, later in the night, turned to snow. Visions of a night in this same bivouac years ago, when the lurid lightning dazzled our eyes, the thunder shook the ridge, and the tent was frozen to the rocks in a terrible storm, came back to me. But that is another story, and has been told elsewhere in this book.
Above the Clouds.
We breakfasted at seven o’clock next morning, after fourteen hours of the tent—cold mutton, tea, bread-and-butter, and jam. The weather was warm and the new snow was peeling off the slopes of Mount Cook. Avalanches hissed and thundered all around us, the mountains being literally alive, and in a most dangerous condition for climbing. This, however, did not concern us greatly, for we had decided to rest for a day at the Bivouac, and there was, at last, a good prospect of the weather’s clearing. We spent the day in delightful idleness, lazying on the warm rocks, pottering about the camp, and photographing. Fyfe acted as chief cook, and for each meal prepared a billy of delicious hot tea, using as fuel a little bit of deal board we had brought up, together with some old candles found under the Bivouac Rock. With these he melted snow and boiled the water. We also added to our water supply by spreading snow on a warm sloping rock, and allowing the drip therefrom to collect in a billy and an empty fruit-tin. For the greater part of the day we were above the lower stratum of cloud, which spread itself like a fleecy counterpane over the great valley, or swathed itself about the giant peaks, leaving the dark summits standing in startling yet stately grandeur as pointed islands in a vapoury sea of white and grey. Now and again this counterpane would be torn by some sportive wind or partially dissolved by the warm rays of the sun, and, through the holes thus made, we could see the upper snows of the Great Tasman or its lower tongues of attenuated ice flowing between the piled débris of the grey moraines—the largest in the Southern Alps—thousands of feet below. Later, as the mists gradually dissolved, we obtained glorious views of the great Alps, with their tributary glaciers pouring streams of broken ice down the sides of the valley to feed the parent stream. Here were all our old friends, Haidinger, and De la Bêche, and the Minarets—whose 10,000-feet summits Fyfe and I had trodden—looking down at us with a lofty disdain, and, across the valley, Malte Brun, the Matterhorn of the Southern Alps, heaved his strong shoulders of grim dark brown rock up through the veil of surging mist, and cleft the azure blue of heaven, recalling to my mind Fyfe’s memorable first ascent and his equally memorable entry in the visitors’ book I had left at the hut—“Played a lone hand with Malte Brun, and won.” Yes, all our old friends were here, strong in their might, each with his own unchanging character, and as one recalled the joyous days spent on slope and summit, the pulses quickened and the hour-glass ran in golden sands. “Glorious creatures; fine old fellows!” as Lamb says. We bowed before them and gave them reverent greeting, befitting their greatness, thinking that
“When time, who steals our years away,
Shall steal our pleasures too,
The memory of the past will stay,
And half our joys renew.”
It was decided not to go to sleep that evening, but to start for the traverse of Mount Cook before midnight. We, however, crept into our sleeping bags inside the tent in order to keep warm. Turner had complained of the dampness at the end of the tent the night before, so I took his place, and gave him an inside berth. At 10 p.m. Fyfe was astir boiling us a billy of tea, and at 10.20 we breakfasted! The sky was clear, and the moon was shining; but, higher up the range, the clouds were pouring over between Haidinger and De la Bêche. This did not augur well for success. On going through our rücksacks again, we discarded a few things to make them lighter, but, what with cameras, spare clothing, food, and the two aluminium water-bottles, one filled with claret and the other with water, we had to carry from 15 lb. to 20 lb. each—rather heavy loads for so long and difficult a climb.