THE FIRST CROSSING OF MOUNT COOK
“From depth to height, from height to loftier height
The climber sets his foot and sets his face,
Tracks lingering sunbeams to their resting-place,
And counts the last pulsations of the light:
Strenuous through day, and unsurprised by night,
He runs a race with Time and wins the race.”
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
I had been in the hands of my doctor, and had made a good recovery.
It was not surprising, therefore, that with renewed health and summer
suns there should fall upon me that irresistible longing for the
mountains that so often comes across the dreary miles to the city man.
In imagination I was already drinking in the champagne air of those
higher lands, and seeing, in my mind’s eye, the ever-changing scenes of
the Southern Alps. But I had given up all hopes of a climb that year.
A week or two later, Mr. Samuel Turner, F.R.G.S., of England, appeared
upon the scene and asked Fyfe and myself to join him in an expedition
to the Mount Cook district. I was doubtful about attempting big work,
so I went back to my doctor. He thumped me in various places, listened
carefully to certain interior organs that it is generally supposed
should be in good working order for climbing, and said, “Go: it will
do you good.” That settled it; though I believe if the doctor had said
“No,” I should have gone all the same. Turner and Fyfe had a week’s
start of me, and, before I could shake off the shackles of the city,
they were already at the Hermitage.
Our coach had a full load of passengers, and the accommodation
along the line of route was sorely taxed. “Very comfortable in the
laundry,” one man had written in the visitors’ book, and this entry
was indicative of the general crush, for there was truth as well as
sarcasm in the sentence. Both this hostelry and the one at Mount Cook
were in the hands of the Tourist Department, and, like most Government
enterprises of the kind, were a dismal failure. Tourists, or the
majority of them, do not have votes, and what matters efficiency under
a Liberal Government if votes cannot be counted? Much better expend the
needed money in some other place where the ballot box looms larger on
the political horizon. _Vox populi, vox Dei!_
The views along the lake-side as we drove towards Aorangi in the early
morning were very beautiful, and it was pleasing to note a considerable
increase in the bird-life of this region, because as a general rule the
feathered tribe of a colony has to bear the brunt of the colonist’s
gun. Swan, Paradise and grey duck seemed to abound, while the strutting
pukaki, the perky red-bill, and the ubiquitous seagull were also in
evidence. As the coach pulled up at the Hermitage, Turner and Fyfe
appeared in the doorway. They had attempted the ascent of Mount Sealy
in a nor’-wester, and, as was only to be expected, had failed.
Two days later we left the Hermitage and walked up the Tasman Valley,
fourteen miles, to the Ball Glacier Hut. Clark, Graham, and Green,
of the Hermitage staff, who were packing provisions to the huts,
came with us. The skilful way in which Clark managed this portion
of his duties was evident even to a novice in the art of transport
in rough country. He had reduced it to a science, and, though he
declared that the dreadful Hooker River would one day be the death of
him, he continued year after year successfully to make these packing
pilgrimages with the horses across swollen streams and moraines and
avalanche débris to the Ball Glacier Hut, and thence, without horses,
over the solid hummocky and crevassed ice to the Malte Brun Hut, far up
the Great Tasman Glacier.
The huts were now very comfortable, and I could not help contrasting
the changes that had been made since my wife and I first pitched our
tent in this rocky wilderness sixteen years before, and carried tents,
blankets, and provisions on our own backs along the crumbling moraine
and up the trackless valley. We passed the spot where we had bivouacked
under the stunted pine tree, and a screech from an impudent kea on the
moraine recalled the fact that in those days a slight detour would have
been made in order to get him for the pot. Now the keas are preserved
to amuse the tourists, and the chief guide, with wonderful celerity,
will produce you a four-course dinner that is warranted to satisfy even
a Mount Cook appetite. It is true that coloured oilcloth takes the
place of spotless damask, and that soups, entrees, etc., are evolved
from the mysterious contents of gaudily labelled tins. Nevertheless,
after a hard day’s tramp, one is apt to consider it a banquet fit for
a king. There is a story current—and it is quite a true one—of two
tourists who finished a four-course wine dinner at the Ball Glacier Hut
with black coffee and cigars, after which one, looking at the unusual
surroundings, remarked quite seriously to his companion, “Bai Jove! We
are roughing it, aren’t we?”
Next day we walked up the glacier to the Malte Brun Hut, which we found
half buried in snow. A week before it was quite covered, and Clark and
Green, coming up with some tourists, had to dig their way down to the
door, while inside the hut six candles had to be kept burning all day
to give light. Our party was bent on the conquest of Elie de Beaumont,
but a storm came up from the north-west, and a heavy fall of snow put
climbing out of the question for some days. We decided to retreat to
the Ball Hut, and walked down the glacier in the dying storm, the gaunt
precipices of the Malte Brun Range looming darkly through the mists,
while the murmuring of waterfalls and the roaring of avalanches were
borne on the winds across the floor of the glacier.
On Christmas Eve, the weather having cleared, we packed up tent,
sleeping bags and provisions, and started across the Tasman Glacier and
the Murchison Valley, for a climb on the Liebig Range. Our objective
was the Nun’s Veil, a mountain of about 9000 feet. It occupies a
commanding position on the range, and Fyfe and I had often expressed
a desire to climb it for the sake of the splendid views likely to be
obtained. It was a hot walk across the glacier, here almost entirely
covered with morainic débris. A solitary kea from the flanks of the
Malte Brun Range came and screeched at us, daring us to enter his
demesne; but we heeded not his eldritch cries, and descended into the
Murchison Valley, the upper portion of which is filled with a fine
glacier drawing its supply of ice from an area of 14,000 acres. The
Murchison River coming from this eight-mile-long glacier barred our
way, but we doffed our nether garments and crossed it in comfort in
the garb of Old Gaul. Camp was pitched close to a waterfall that came
down in a series of leaps and cascades for fully two thousand feet. It
was a most interesting corner. The billy was boiled and supper served
round a blazing fire, after which we turned into our sleeping bags
inside the Whymper tent.
We slept fairly well till Turner roused us with an attempt to sing
“Christians, awake!” and we realized that it was Christmas morn. Turner
had the billy boiled—an hour too soon, but that was a detail—and,
breakfast finished, we waited for the dawn. Then a start was made
up the steep slopes of a spur on the Liebig Range. The waterfall on
our right came down in magnificent leaps. At our feet the Murchison
River, in numerous branches, wandered over its stony bed, and north
and north-east hundreds and hundreds of rocky peaks and ice-clothed
mountains cleft the sky. Directly opposite, across the valley, the
splendid mass of Mount Cook filled the view above the boulder-strewn
glacier. Presently the sun caught its upper snows and grim precipices,
bathing them in a warm ethereal tint—the despair alike of the artist
and of the writer. The rosy flush crept slowly down the slopes,
and then faded as it came, giving place to a wonderfully delicate
pearly grey with just the faintest trace of warmth in it. This in
turn vanished, and then, as Phœbus came boldly up above the eastern
mountain-tops, the snows of Aorangi were changed to gleaming silver. It
was a sunrise to be remembered.
A detailed description of this climb would only bore the reader
unacquainted with Alpine heights. Suffice it then to say that the
ridge that from below looked a “cake-walk” became very much broken,
and gave us some interesting rock-work. Fyfe, who was, of course, in
his element, decided to keep to the arête, and gain the snow slopes
higher up; but Turner urged a deviation, and, somewhat reluctantly,
we descended a snow couloir, flanked on either side by magnificent
precipices. This detour lost us five hundred feet of elevation, and
the climb became, for an hour or more, a weary snow trudge. The main
arête was regained only to find that we were completely cut off from
the Nun’s Veil. We therefore had to be content with the first ascent
of the nearest peak—Mount Beret, 8761 feet, which is the highest point
of the rocky Priest’s Cap. The final climb was interesting, especially
the crossing of one narrow snow ridge, on which there was just room
to stand. On either hand the snow slope swept sharply down to great
bergschrunds that yawned below. From the summit of our peak the view
of Mount Cook was magnificent—probably the finest in all the Southern
Alps—and, towards the north-east, there was a most glorious panorama
of mountain peaks that seemed to stretch for over a hundred miles,
till the more distant were lost in a haze of bluish-grey. The weather
was still unsettled, and a cold wind had arisen; but we secured some
very interesting photographs. On the descent we got two thousand feet
of glissading, and reached camp early in the afternoon. We packed up,
waded the Murchison River, crossed the Tasman Glacier, and were back in
the Ball Hut just before nightfall, after fifteen hours’ fairly hard
work—an easy day for an invalid!
We now began to cast longing eyes toward Mount Cook, the first
“colling” of which—_i.e._ the climbing to the highest summit on one
side, and the descending on the other side—we had resolved to attempt.
This was no ordinary undertaking, and it was necessary that we should
take no chances either in regard to weather or equipment. The weather,
however, was not yet quite settled, and another difficulty in the way
was Mr. Turner’s boot. While the chief guide at the Hermitage was
hammering some nails into it, he gave the heel a tap with the hammer,
and the heel came off! The boot was sent post-haste to the nearest
shoemaker—ninety-six miles away. It was now due back at the Hermitage,
and Fyfe went down for it—a 28-mile journey there and back. Meanwhile
Turner did his walking and climbing in a pair of my Alpine boots,
I, luckily, having taken the precaution to bring a second pair with
me. Turner and I were left in the hut, and during these two days, in
addition to doing the cooking and washing-up, I managed to find time to
make a collection of beetles and butterflies for my friend, Mr. Percy
Buller of Wellington.
On Wednesday, December 27, accompanied by Dr. Fitchett of Wellington,
we proceeded up the Tasman Glacier to the Malte Brun Hut, where we
found a party, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Longton of Christchurch, Miss
von Dadelszen, Miss Hickson, and Mr. W. M‘Intosh of Wellington, under
the leadership of Graham, one of the Hermitage guides. These huts have
only two rooms, and the bunks—four in each room—are like steamers’
berths, one above the other. One room is supposed to be reserved for
ladies; the men’s room does for bedroom, kitchen, dining-room, and
drawing-room by turns. The problem of housing seven men and three women
in these two four-berth cabins had to be solved by one of the men
taking a bunk in the ladies’ room, and two of our party sleeping on the
floor in the men’s room. This central portion of the Southern Alps was
becoming such a popular tourist resort that problems of this nature not
infrequently presented themselves, and further accommodation, both at
the huts and at the Hermitage, was urgently required.
Fyfe having returned with the much-travelled boot, we were ready for
more serious work, and on the 29th December were astir at 1.15 a.m.,
preparing breakfast. An hour later two climbing parties might have been
seen marching by lantern-light in single file down the path that leads
from the hut to the Upper Tasman Glacier, 500 feet below, one party
consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Longton, Dr. Fitchett, Mr. M‘Intosh, and
Graham, being bound for the Hochstetter Dome, 9179 feet high, while our
party was bent upon making the first ascent of Elie de Beaumont, a fine
snow-clad mountain of 10,200 feet. The day was not promising. While we
were having breakfast, a fitful wind had soughed ominously about the
hut, and by the time we had proceeded about two miles up the glacier,
and before it was yet dawn, this wind had increased in strength, and
was blowing steadily. The great mountains around us seemed dwarfed
in the feeble light before the dawning, and the cold, grey snows of
the Minarets, Mount Green, Mount Walter, and Elie de Beaumont loomed
ghost-like against the western sky. Eastward, the serrated ridge of
Mount Darwin, and the dark precipices of Malte Brun frowned on us from
heights of over nine thousand and ten thousand feet respectively. The
rounded snows of the Hochstetter Dome closed in the view at the head of
the great ice-filled valley. The snow on the glacier was hard with a
night’s freezing, and we made quick progress over its gently sloping,
even surface. The sunrise on the Tasman peaks was devoid of the
beautiful rosy tints that one so often sees in Alpine regions; but far
away down the valley beyond the Ben Ohau Range, where the storm-clouds
now gathered in great companies and battalions, there was a gorgeous
and even a theatrical display, the mountain-tops and the distant
cloud-land appearing as if lit up by some great conflagration, or the
glowing fires of some vast volcano. Just as day was dawning, Graham
halted to rope up his party for the ascent of the Dome, while we swung
round to the left in the direction of our mountain.
Easy snow slopes broken by an occasional crevasse led us towards the
foot of Mount Walter, from which “The Times” Glacier takes its rise
on the western side. This fine peak (9507 feet) and Mount Green (8704
feet) rise from the main glacier, two glorious spires of rock, and
ice, and snow, forming, with the pure dome of Elie de Beaumont, a
magnificent Alpine view that dominates the head of the Great Tasman
Glacier. The approach to the upper snows of our mountain was guarded
by deep crevasses, great gaping bergschrunds, and gigantic séracs, and
through and up these we had to thread our way. The snow was in bad
condition, and the climb became a weary grind. Fyfe and Turner led
alternately, and I, being in the middle of the rope, had little to do
but follow my leader. Some great ice-cliffs on the left coming down
from the shoulder of Mount Walter looked dangerous, and we gave them as
wide a berth as possible. As we climbed past them on the right, a great
ice avalanche fell away below us, crashing with thundering roar on to
the glacier some distance to the left of our line of route. Ahead, the
face of Elie de Beaumont presented a fine sight with its towering walls
of ice and steep snow slopes. On the whole line of the ascent we could
see no sign of any rock to contrast with the delicate harmonies of
green and blue and white.
[Illustration: MOUNT WALTER.]
Beyond the corner of Mount Walter there was an interesting little
bit of work in threading a way past great blocks of ice and gaping
schrunds; but, generally speaking, the climb was uninteresting. It is
a climb to do once, but never a second time. We dodged round a steep
sloping ice-block, and ascended a fairly easy snow slope, only to find
the way barred by a bergschrund—a crevasse with one lip lower than
the other. This schrund, however, was narrow enough to permit of our
jumping over it, and, though it was a case of jumping up, we had little
difficulty in crossing it.
It is very rare for two parties to be climbing together within sight
of each other in the Southern Alps, because in New Zealand we have
not yet got to that stage in which, as Whistler put it, you can both
admire the mountain and recognize the tourist on the top. It was a
decided novelty, therefore, to watch the Longton party gradually
ascending higher and higher on the Hochstetter Dome. By the time we had
crossed this bergschrund we could see them—five small dots—like flies,
sheltering from the cold wind on the lee side of the ridge leading to
the lower peak of the Dome. They, wisely, did not attempt the higher
peak.
When we had gained a height of 9000 feet, the cold north-wester, at
this altitude blowing with considerable violence, struck us with full
force, and whisked clouds of snow and fine particles of ice in our
faces. The mist was also pouring over the main divide, and the Longton
party, who were watching us from their distant sheltered ridge, now saw
us disappearing into the clouds. Really, we should have turned at this
point, but Turner was very anxious to climb a virgin peak, and, while
he led up the frozen slope, we two followed meekly in his uncertain
wake. Soon the clouds and the driving snow grew so dense that we could
see only a very few yards ahead, and the line of route became quite
obscured. The wind also increased in violence, and once or twice we had
to cling to the frozen slope with the aid of our ice-axes. The wind was
bitterly cold, and icicles hung from Turner’s moustache and half-grown
beard. For about an hour we climbed upward in this blizzard, without
any likelihood of a view, and with a very good chance of not being able
to follow the proper route on the descent. Besides, we could not tell
what dangers lay ahead, so at last Turner gave the word to retreat.
During a momentary rent in the driving cloud, we got a glimpse of the
last bergschrund, which runs round the final ice-cap of the mountain,
so that we were only some four hundred feet below the summit, and all
the real difficulties of the climb had been overcome. Another half an
hour in fine weather, and we should have topped our peak; but a first
ascent cannot be claimed till the actual summit is under foot—at all
events by any true sportsman—and therefore, though only a few hundred
feet of easy step-cutting on the final ice-cap remained to be done, we
retired defeated.
As we turned, the swirling cloud and snow became denser, and I was
fearful lest we should not find our way back. All I could see was
my two shivering companions and the Alpine rope that connected the
party. As it was, the drifting snow had completely obliterated our
upward steps, and we got off the proper line; but we climbed downward
as quickly as possible, trusting to the general direction of the
slopes to bring us right in the end. There was not, however, a great
deal of room to come and go on, and the great walls and blocks of
broken ice loomed through the fog, looking nearly twice their actual
size, and more formidable than ever. At length Fyfe found a landmark
in the sloping sérac round which we had climbed on the ascent, and,
thereafter, we were able to keep the route fairly well. Just below this
sérac Turner started a glissade, but the slope—hard rough ice under a
very thin coating of snow—was unsuitable for glissading, and, after
whizzing down a few feet, I had the misfortune to strike a hard block
in the ice, and was doubled up in an instant with a bruise on my left
hip, another on my right knee, and a third on the bone just above the
right ankle. Using my ice-axe as a brake, I shouted to the leader, and
quickly pulled up; but not till Fyfe, who was glissading behind, had
almost cannoned on to me. After this experience, we proceeded more
cautiously till we had passed the dangerous corner at the foot of
Walter Peak, where the fog thinned out, and we could see more clearly.
The rest was a trudge down the glacier to the hut. Turner proudly
carried the icicles on his moustache right into the hut. We had been
going steadily for nine hours without halting to eat or drink, and we
were glad of hot soup and other luxuries that Graham provided out of
the Government locker.
All the others, including two tourists who had come up with Clark,
returned to the Ball Hut that afternoon; but we remained behind to
make another attempt to conquer Elie de Beaumont. Next day the weather
was still threatening; but we marched off again, only to turn after
proceeding a little way up the glacier. We resolved to try once more
on the morrow, and started by lantern light, this time at 2 a.m. The
night had been unusually warm, and Fyfe and I felt convinced that it
was useless to persevere, as the snow would be in bad order, and there
was a nor’-wester brewing. In deference to Turner’s wishes, however,
we went on; but we never touched our mountain that day. The snow was
soft and slushy, and, after a weary, uninteresting trudge, we reached
a point above the Lendenfeld Saddle—8000 feet above sea-level. The
nor’-wester had covered the West Coast with cloud; but Fyfe and I were
glad of the opportunity of looking down the pass we made from the head
of the Great Tasman Glacier to the West Coast six years before. Many
memories of that somewhat daring exploit were recalled, and, as we
looked over the steep walls of splintered rock and broken ice, we now
wondered how we had got down.
In an icy-cold wind we trudged wearily back through the soft snow to
the Malte Brun Hut. The weather was bad as ever, so, after some food
and a rest, we retreated down the glacier to the Ball Hut. Fyfe had a
skinned heel, Turner had sore feet, and I had a bad ankle. Again we had
suffered defeat: Elie de Beaumont hid his snowy summit in the clouds,
defiant and unconquered, and the ascent of Mount Cook seemed still afar
off.
On our arrival at the Ball Glacier Hut we found it already occupied by
a party consisting of Professor Baldwin Spencer of Melbourne, Mr. and
Mrs. Lindon of Geelong Grammar School, and Mr. L. Stott, junior, of
Melbourne. Clark had come up with them, as had also the coach-driver
and the stableman, so that the hut was again full to overflowing, with
the result that three men had to sleep in the ladies’ room, while Clark
and Fyfe dossed on the floor of the men’s room, in which all the bunks
were already occupied. So far as we were concerned, it was evident that
our party would be the better for a rest; but even had we been bent
upon another climb, the weather would again have prevented it.
That night the nor’-wester developed in force, and, accompanied by
heavy rain, howled round the hut. Turner and Fyfe, the coach-driver and
the stableman, returned to the Hermitage, but I was unable to accompany
them, and remained behind to treat my now swollen ankle with hot
fomentations and bandaging. Nevertheless, I spent a very pleasant day
in the company of the Professor, Mr. and Mrs. Lindon, Mr. Stott, and
Clark. Our expedition was evidently, for various reasons, becoming an
ill-starred one, and the congenial company of my new-found friends came
like a ray of sunshine through the gloom.
In the afternoon the weather cleared, and, as it was New Year’s Day, we
celebrated the event with a four-course dinner, served up in Clark’s
best style. The menu consisted of soup, fried sardines, cold mutton,
and hot plum pudding, with cocoa (decidedly good) _à la_ Baldwin
Spencer. The best of the Professor was that you would never know he
was a professor, and it was some time before it dawned upon me that he
might be, and indeed was, the man who had been guilty of an erudite
treatise on a rudimentary eye in the tuatara lizard, and the author
of a valuable work on the Australian aboriginals! Evidently I was in
luck’s way—he might have been just an ordinary tourist, or a climber
who regarded the mountains very much in the nature of greased poles,
to be climbed for his own glorification and profit. On the contrary,
the new visitors were charmed with the New Zealand Alps, and it
was a great delight to Clark and myself to find such a whole-souled
appreciation of our mountain glories, and no attempt at belittlement or
vain comparison.
That evening there was a wonderful sunset, and we all stood outside the
hut watching the gorgeous and ever-changing pageantry of cloud-land.
In front of De la Bêche—most beautiful of mountains—and the spotless
snows of the Minarets, far up the ice-filled valley, great rounded
cumuli came sailing across from the north-west, like huge balls of
glowing fire. The southern sky was glorious with higher clouds of spun
gold and burnished copper, and the heavens themselves were tinted
with yellow and amber, in the distance exquisitely shaded by some
master-hand into delicate ethereal greens and blues. The ever-changing
tints formed marvellous and wonderful harmonies. The stony grey wall
of the moraine fronting the hut was splashed with the sombre green of
the Alpine herbage, and across the glacier, high above the level of the
moraine, the rugged rock peaks of the Malte Brun Range were tinged with
dull rose, their bold perpendicular slabs silhouetted against a sky of
lapis lazuli flecked with exquisite wisps of thin cloud. The colours
changed quickly; the clouds, sailing past De la Bêche in the dying
nor’-wester, lost their fire; the spun gold, the lapis lazuli, and the
delicate peacock blues and greens gave place to sombre grey. The air
grew chilly, so we went into the hut, and chatted around the fire till
bedtime. Thus passed our New Year’s Day.
On the 2nd January my friends departed for the Malte Brun Hut, eight
miles up the glacier, and I was left alone. Even the keas and the two
sea-gulls, who had interested and amused us during the previous day,
had gone upon a winged pilgrimage. I did some washing and mending,
cooked my meals, washed the dishes, tidied the hut, wrote up my
journal, made a beetle trap with an empty tin sunk in the ground, fed
the carrier pigeon left by Clark, and read Rider Haggard’s _Jess_,
which I found in the hut, for the second time. The weather grew worse,
and in the afternoon snow fell in big flakes.
On the 3rd January the programme was much the same. This day I
continued the hot fomentations on my ankle, and succeeded in reducing
the swelling considerably. I had no watch, so I gauged the time by
my hunger, and determined to satisfy the inner man with some of the
delicacies in the Government larder. “Hare soup” rather appealed to
one, and a tin was opened, only to find that it contained stewed
kidneys! I pitched it over the hut and opened a tin labelled “Curried
mutton chops”; but once more the label was a lie, and there stood
revealed stewed kidneys. That tin with its contents also went over
the roof of the hut, as did a third delicacy that existed only in the
imagination of the packer. I was going through the same trial that my
wife and I had gone through at the De la Bêche Bivouac several years
before, and found, afterwards, that my experience was not at all an
unusual one. Finally I made a dish of hot macaroni soup (put up by
another firm), to which I added green peas tinned in Paris, and this,
with bread, made a sumptuous repast. The weather was still unsettled,
the barometer standing at 27·14, and the thermometer at 46 degrees.
The keas and the gulls returned in the evening, and one of the keas
came inside the hut and walked about, cocking his head knowingly from
side to side as if he were taking an inventory of the furniture, and
reckoning what it would fetch at an auction sale. There were in all
nine keas, and they went through the most comical antics, chattering
in their quaint kea language, dancing on the rocks, and even kissing
one another. As the night wore on they became a decided nuisance,
glissading down the iron roof, and picking up and dropping the empty
meat tins behind the hut. The tin-dropping business, with its noisy
rattle, seemed to entertain them hugely, but the sleepy mountaineer
inside the hut could not see where the fun came in, so he got up
and hurled imprecations and stones at them. They replied to the
imprecations with some of their own invective, and the stone-throwing,
instead of scaring, only amused them. However, I had my revenge, for
a random shot laid one of them low. I picked him up and put him in
a box, just outside the door, with the intention of skinning him in
the morning. Then all the other keas gathered together in a committee
meeting a few yards off and jabbered away to one another about this
strange big featherless animal who threw stones. I know I was roundly
condemned. And the mate of the dead kea came up to the box, and pecked
at it, and crooned eerily over the corpse till I felt a perfect brute,
and went off to bed again, but was unable to sleep.
Thereupon I fell to moralizing upon the pleasures and penalties of
mountaineering. Apart from the actual joy of climbing, it gives the
opportunity of beholding Nature in her most sublime and most glorious
moods. Sir Martin Conway agrees in this, but adds a word of warning.
“The climber,” he says, “pits his life against Nature’s forces, and
dares them to take it. He can do so with impunity if he knows enough,
and has enough skill. He will get the better of Nature every time,
and to an almost dead certainty; but if he does not know enough,
or lacks skill, sooner or later Nature will win the trick.” Skill,
knowledge, and text-books are supposed to have hurled the dangers
of mountaineering almost into the unknown. But Mummery, that most
brilliant cragsman—whose own unknown grave lies somewhere among the
snows of the giant Himalayas—in his delightful book about his climbs
in the Alps and Caucasus, says he cannot forget that the first guide
to whom he was ever roped, and one who possessed more knowledge of
mountains than is to be found even in the Badminton Library, was
none the less killed on the Brouillard Mont Blanc, and his son,
subsequently, on Koshtantau. Then the memory of two rollicking parties,
comprising seven men, who one day in 1879 were climbing on the west
face of the Matterhorn, passes with ghost-like admonition before his
mind, and bids him remember that of these seven Mr. Penhall was killed
on the Wetterhorn, Ferdinand Imseng on the Macugnaga Monte Rosa,
and John Petrus on the Fresnay Mont Blanc. In New Zealand the early
pioneers of Alpine climbing have done good work without guides and
without accident, and in thus quoting two such famous authorities as
Conway and Mummery I have no wish to in any way discourage the practice
of so ennobling a sport, but rather to enjoin caution and pains to
acquire proficiency. “High proficiency,” as Mummery again points out,
“is only attainable when a natural aptitude is combined with long
years of practice. It is true the great ridges sometimes demand their
sacrifice; but the mountaineer would hardly forgo his worship though
he knew himself to be the destined victim. But, happily, to most of us
the great brown slabs bending over into immeasurable space, the lines
and curves of the wind-moulded cornice, the delicate undulations of the
fissured snow, are old and trusted friends, ever luring us to health
and fun and laughter, and enabling us to bid a sturdy defiance to all
the ills that time and life oppose.”
But I have been led by the lonely hut and its surroundings into a
moralizing mood. Let me therefore come back from the great peaks and
descend to the valley, for the next morning the former were hidden
in the clouds, and even the valley was filled with gloom. Fyfe and
Turner had not returned. I felt lonelier than ever, and formed a
strong conviction that man is a gregarious animal. Having come to this
conclusion, I cooked myself a late breakfast of bacon and onions, and
a little later went out and saw the Professor and his party striding
down the moraine from the Upper Tasman. In a few minutes the billy
was singing on the fire, and then, over a cup of hot coffee with my
friends, I became once more a sociable being and all the world was
rose-coloured. The visitors resolved to go to the Hermitage in the
afternoon. I decided to walk a few miles down the valley with them, and
then, tempted by the pleasant company and thoughts of the luxurious
ease of the Hermitage, I was persuaded to accompany them all the way.
By the time I had done ten miles my ankle was again bad, and, an
hour or two later, I limped into the Hermitage, dead lame, and fully
convinced that my climbing for that season was at an end.