Chapter XX

THE FIRST CROSSING OF MOUNT COOK—concluded

Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

We spent altogether twenty-five minutes on the summit of the mountain—12,349 feet above the sea. The views were certainly grand and very beautiful, but not so fine as from between the altitudes of 10,000 and 11,000 feet, for the simple reason that, from the greater height of the summit, all the lesser mountains were dwarfed, and many of those that looked imposing from below had now dwindled into insignificance.

Having repacked our rücksacks, we gave one last glance about us, and then started down the slope on the other side of the mountain. We were now met by a wind, which, of course, at this altitude, was very cold. The snow slope was not steep, but it was frozen, and we had to cut a number of steps before we could reach the rock arête. In half an hour we were on the highest rocks of this arête, and, to our dismay, we found them in the worst possible condition for climbing—plastered with snow and ice, and fringed with great icicles. We might have returned to the summit and climbed back to safety before nightfall down our upward route; but we were very keen to “col” the peak for the first time, and decided to take the risk. Very little was said, and, after a brief consultation between Fyfe and myself, the word was given to continue the descent, and we started with grim determination to conquer the difficulties and overcome the dangers that lay between us and the upper slopes of the Hooker Glacier, thousands of feet below the summit on the western side. It now became a question, not only of climbing with care, but also with all possible speed; for there was no place on this long ridge, in its present condition and with the cold wind blowing, where we could bivouac in safety. We had reckoned on a comparatively easy climb down these rocks, and also upon crossing the bergschrund at the head of the Hooker Glacier before nightfall, but soon saw that this would be out of the question, especially as one of the party was a slow climber. Fyfe repeatedly urged him to hurry and trust for safety to the rope. Fyfe was now in the responsible position—last man on the rope. I came next, and Turner was between me and Graham, who, under general directions from Fyfe, led down. After descending a few hundred feet, we soon found that, owing to the ice-glazing and the new snow, it was impossible to keep to the crest of the ridge, and the descent became largely a series of traverses across difficult and, at times, precipitous faces of rock, mostly on the eastern face of the arête. On the west the climbing was even more difficult, and there was a bitter wind blowing, so we avoided that side as much as possible. In one place we had to climb back from the eastern face through a gap of overhanging rock and great icicles. Peter smashed the greater part of the icicles with the handle of his ice-axe, and the broken pieces went swishing down the precipices towards the Hooker. Under the circumstances, there was naturally some hesitancy in selecting the best route; but there was little time for undue deliberation, and as Graham paused now and then in some doubt Fyfe would call out, “Will it ‘go,’ Peter?” Peter, in quiet and solemn tones, would invariably give the one answer, “Well, it doesn’t look too good,” and then would come the answering admonition from Fyfe, “Get down—get somewhere!”

At last we came to a break in the ridge that looked utterly unscaleable. We halted and glanced ahead and from side to side. Then we cast longing eyes to some snow slopes leading down to the Linda Glacier on the east; but that was thousands of feet below us. “Will it ‘go,’ Peter?” we asked, and back came the non-committal reply, “It doesn’t look too good.” There was considerable hesitancy. It now appeared that the moment for decisive action had come, so I suggested that we should unrope, and be lowered down singly over the face of rock. I was lowered down first, and then, untying, the rope was hauled up, and Graham was lowered. I had gained a footing on a knob of rock that jutted out from the snow and ice in a narrow “chimney”; but there was not room on this for two people, so I cut a few steps and climbed down some twelve or fifteen feet, and held on in a somewhat insecure position. I confess that I was anxious to see the last man make his appearance: for, with a keen wind nearly freezing the fingers with which I clung to the rock, and without even the “moral” support of the rope, my position was not altogether one to be envied. Graham climbed down the slanting “chimney” for a few feet towards me, and then Turner was lowered to the knob of rock on which I had gained my first secure footing. It remained for Fyfe to get down. His was a position of the greatest responsibility, and it required a cool head and splendid nerve, for there was no one to lower him. He had to use the rope doubled and hitched over a projection of rock. The greatest care had to be exercised, especially for the first few feet, in case the rope should slip over the knob. Fyfe, however, managed to get down in safety, and then we all roped up once more. There was no room for us to shift our positions to revert to the original order on the rope, so that now I had to take the lead. We climbed round the foot of the steep wall that had cut us off, and once more gained the crest of the ridge; but it would not “go,” and we crossed to the eastern face, scrambling down a short broken couloir, and then traversing back to regain the ridge. I had to hack a hole through long icicles that were hanging from a jutting rock. There was just room to crawl through, the knapsack grazing the broken fingers of ice above. There might have been a route on the eastern side of this face; but a glance down the dark precipices and couloirs, filled with clear ice, to a depth of three or four thousand feet, was somewhat startling, especially when that glance was made in search of a practicable line of descent. Besides, under such conditions as we were face to face with, the known is always preferable to the unknown, and the more so when time is so important a factor in a climb. We knew the ridge we were on could be descended, but we might easily have got into a cul de sac on those grim, ice-plastered eastern precipices.

Our difficulties, however, were by no means over, for, in a few minutes, I was peering over the face of a dangerous-looking, precipitous cliff. A glance showed that there was no practicable route either to the right or the left. The afternoon was wearing on; there was no time for hesitancy, so I went over the edge, and, with the assistance of the spare rope, scrambled down a steep chimney with square smooth sides and few hand-grips. This chimney, however, fell away from the perpendicular near its foot and sloped inwards. On its final twelve feet there were neither hand nor foot holds. There was accordingly nothing for it but to unrope again, and be lowered down singly. Graham lowered me down with one rope, Fyfe and Turner anchoring on the rocks above. For a little way, by clawing at the rock with feet and hands, and by the friction of my body, I was able to descend with some slight amount of dignity, and told Graham to lower away. Then, as I reached the part where the chimney sloped inward from the perpendicular, I lost contact with the rocks, and hung suspended like Mahomet’s coffin between heaven and earth. The strain of the rope round one’s waist, threatening to effect a complete change in one’s internal anatomy, a vague clawing at air with one’s hands and an equally vague searching for foot-hold with the nether limbs as you dangle in space at the end of a forty-foot rope with precipices and snow slopes of over a thousand feet below, have a chastening influence on the most seasoned mountaineer, and, however exhilarating the experience may be, it is always with feelings of supreme satisfaction, and almost of devout thankfulness, that he once more comes to close grips with mother earth. At all events, when, after these brief and more or less graceful gyrations at the end of that particular rope, the strain was removed from my waist, and foot-holds and hand-holds once more became actual realities, no complaint was made, even though the middle finger of my left hand, which had been cut on the sharp rocks, was spurting blood, and dyeing the snow a beautiful crimson.

The spot on which my feet again met the mountain was not the best of landing-places, for the rock shelved outwards into snow. It was now Peter’s turn to descend, so I planted myself as firmly as possible and watched the operation. He was a good stone and a half heavier, so there must have been a considerable strain on Fyfe’s arms. As he slid off the rocks into the air, his ice-axe caught in the chimney, and sent him swinging round like a top. I saw a long body and a swirling mass of arms and legs above me, preceded by an excellent felt hat that went sailing down on the wind to the Linda Glacier thousands of feet below, and then a somewhat dishevelled but cool mountaineer, with a little assistance as to where to plant his feet, landed beside me. Peter’s descent was so comical that I could not refrain from laughter. Turner was the next man, and Fyfe urged him forward. The rope was fastened round his waist, and he too cut a comical figure as he slid off from the perpendicular, clawed vainly at vacancy, and eventually landed beside us. Fyfe’s grinning countenance above, peering over the edge of the precipice, as if he were enjoying the sport, was quite a study.

Sensational as this performance was, especially until a landing-place had been found, a more serious one remained for Fyfe to accomplish. I, however, well knew Fyfe’s capabilities, otherwise I should never have undertaken such a descent. We had been together in other tight corners before, and I had absolute faith in his ability to get down safely. Once more he hitched the double rope over a rock, and scrambled over the edge of the precipice. The only rock available was slightly loose, so he had to be very careful at the start in case the rope should slip over the projection. Such experiences are apt to be a little nerve-shattering, and these two sensational descents—especially the latter one—must have put some strain upon his nerve. However, he was again equal to the emergency, and, assisted by Graham’s long reach as he swung like a pendulum over the last few feet, he was soon beside us in safety.

A halt was called for a few minutes while we donned our spare clothing. I gave Graham my hat, as I had a spare cap in my rücksack, and then bound my bleeding finger with strips of adhesive plaster. After all, there was something very exhilarating in such difficult work. Every nerve and muscle was at full tension, and thoughts of all else save the matter in hand were banished from the brain. The way ahead now seemed clear. We had “drunk delight of battle with our peers,” and, thus far, had won.

Roping up once more in the old order, we continued the descent. We were still a long way from the saddle, and the summit of Mount Hector seemed very far below. The climbing, however, now became easier, and in places we were able to make fairly quick progress. Eventually, at a quarter to seven on Wednesday evening, we had left the dreadful arête behind us, and Peter cut steps across a frozen ridge that led from Green’s Saddle into the long 2000-feet couloir that sloped steeply down to the Hooker Glacier. It was a quarter to seven on the evening of Wednesday, and, as we had now been going since 11.15 p.m. on Tuesday, or for 19-1/2 hours, we hoped to find the couloir in good order. Our hearts sank as we saw Graham plying his ice-axe. Fyfe shouted to him to endeavour to do without the cutting, and to kick steps; but this was impossible—the slope was frozen hard! The wind was also increasing in violence, and bitterly cold. There was still the alternative of cutting down to the Linda Glacier on the eastern side, and of a comparatively easy and comfortable descent, out of the wind, to the great plateau, from which we could gain the Glacier Dome and then descend to the Bivouac Rock by means of our steps of the night before. The matter was mentioned between Fyfe and myself; but we scarcely gave it a second thought, and decided to stick to our original intention to “col” the peak. The word was given to go forward down the couloir, and young Graham, who was leading, treated us to a splendid example of ice-craft and physical endurance as he hacked a way with his axe down that 2000 feet of frozen slope. It was a narrow, steep gully varying in width from about fifteen to twenty yards, and flanked on either side by great walls of precipitous rock.

Hour after hour went by, and we appeared to be getting no nearer to the foot of the couloir. The wind seemed to pierce to our bones, and every now and then it would send a shower of broken ice from the precipices above swishing down about our ears. Some of the bits were big enough to hurt. In one place we took to a rib of rock in the middle of the couloir. Occasionally the rocks on the left of the couloir were used for hand-grips, thus enabling Graham to cut smaller steps. Turner, at this stage, began to feel the want of sleep, and asked me to talk to him to keep him awake. The mere suggestion of a man’s falling asleep in such a situation was, of course, sufficient to keep one more than ever on the alert, especially as, if Turner had slipped, it would have devolved upon me, being next above on the rope, to hold him up. A few minutes later, some bits of rock—dislodged, no doubt, through the falling icicles that were broken by the wind—came whizzing past us, and as Turner immediately cried out, “Oh, my head! my head!” I knew that he had been struck. In a moment the handle of my axe was driven into the frozen snow and the rope hitched around it; while Fyfe, behind me, had already taken a firm stand. Turner, in his account of the accident, says: “We would have been dashed to eternity if I had fallen and upset Graham out of his steps while step-cutting, which would have been a very easy matter.” Such, however, was not the case, for both Fyfe and I had the rope absolutely taut, and, being well anchored, we could easily have held up three times Turner’s weight. As a matter of fact, he could not have fallen a single yard.

Fortunately, the accident was not a serious one. It resolved itself into a scalp wound about three-quarters of an inch long, and Turner, after a few minutes, was able to continue the descent. Stones falling from such a great height—probably a thousand feet or more—acquire an extraordinary velocity. Indeed, they come so fast as to be invisible, and you can only hear them whizzing past. Had this stone struck Turner on the top of the head, it would undoubtedly have cleft his skull in twain. Luckily, it only grazed the back of his head at the base of the skull.

We had now descended about a thousand feet of the couloir. The sun had dipped to the rim of the sea, and the western heavens were glorious with colour, heightened by the distant gloom. Almost on a level with us, away beyond Sefton, a band of flame-coloured cloud stretched seaward from the lesser mountains toward the ocean, and beyond that again was a far-away continent of cloud, sombre and mysterious, as if it were part of another world. The rugged mountains and the valleys and forests of Southern Westland were being gripped in the shades of night. A long headland, still thousands of feet below us, on the south-west, stretched itself out into the darkened sea, a thin line of white at its base indicating the tumbling breakers of the Pacific Ocean.

Difficult as was our situation, Fyfe and I could not refrain from occasional contemplation of this mysterious and almost fantastic scene of mountain glory. Turner was concerned mostly with his head, and Peter had to devote his whole attention to the step-cutting. We climbed down a rib of rock in the dusk between the lights, and then zigzagged on down the couloir in the steps cut by the never-tiring Graham. Presently the moon rose and bathed the snowy slopes of Stokes and Sefton and other giant mountains in a flood of silver. After the accident we kept closer in to the rocks to evade any falling icicles or stones that might come down. Graham, anxious no doubt to get out of the couloir, was now making the steps rather small, and there was sometimes difficulty in seeing them in the semi-darkness, and in standing in them once they were found; but we got occasional hand-grips on the rocks, so that the danger from a slip was reduced to a minimum. On one occasion I did slip in a bad step; but Fyfe was easily able to hold me on the rope. Down, down, down we went on this apparently never-ending slope. Hour after hour went past, and still the end of the couloir seemed a long way off.

Very little was said. Occasionally there would be a request by Turner asking me to hold him tight on the rope, or a plaintive cry of “Peter! where are the steps?” Peter was non-committal. He had enough to do to cut the steps without telling us where they were, and there was the additional fact that, in some instances, identification might not have been altogether an easy matter. But, if Peter was too busily engaged to be other than non-committal, I, on the other hand, had sufficient time to be optimistic, and I made a point of answering cheerily that Turner was doing splendidly, and that there was only another couple of hundred feet of step-cutting. As a matter of fact, there was more—nearly a thousand feet of it—but, under the special circumstances, I have no doubt the recording angel has overlooked all the lies I told between half-past nine and twelve of the clock that night, both in regard to the length of the couloir and the figure cut by our now despondent companion.

Nine o’clock, ten o’clock, eleven o’clock went past, and still we could not see the final bergschrund at the foot. Fyfe took a turn at step-cutting, but quickly relinquished the task in favour of Graham. Fyfe, however, relieved Graham of his knapsack, and, with his double load, must have had a difficult time coming down in those “economical” steps that Graham was making for the sake of speed. Speed! The word seemed a mockery. We went almost at a snail’s pace!

The wind continued bitterly cold, and the shadow of the precipices in the moonlight seemed to fill the head of the valley with gloom. Some lines of Shelley’s seemed to fit the situation—

Towards the bottom, the couloir broadened out somewhat, and the work was easier. We progressed a little more quickly, and at last reached the bergschrund. This schrund, in ordinary seasons a very formidable one, had been often in our minds during the past few weeks, and gave us some concern from the commencement of the descent; but we reckoned that we could cross it somehow, even if we had to sacrifice an ice-axe and one of the lengths of Alpine rope. The first attempt to find a bridge failed; but Graham, with a pretty bit of snow-craft in the uncertain light, found a comparatively safe snow bridge, over which we crossed one by one, while the others anchored with their ice-axes and held the rope taut in case the man on the bridge at the time should show an unpraiseworthy inclination, by reason of his weight or the rottenness of the snow under him, to explore the unknown depths of the schrund. In a few minutes we were all across in safety, and, just after midnight—on Thursday morning—we stepped on to the upper slopes of the Hooker Glacier, and the first crossing of Mount Cook had been safely accomplished.

Going down a little way to where the slope eased off, and gathering together on the ice, we lit the lantern, hung it on an ice-axe stuck in the snow, and proceeded to explore the rücksacks for food and drink. We had been climbing for twenty-two and three-quarter hours, with but little food or drink. Even now we could scarcely eat; but the little water and a very small quantity of wine left in the bottles were soon disposed of. I had some of my Demerara sugar, and the others were content with a sardine or two and a little bread and jam. What remained of our provisions we now threw away. Fyfe, Graham, and I also indulged in a little whisky that Dr. Fitchett had sent us to the Ball Hut, and a small flask of which Fyfe had carried in his rücksack during the descent. Now that the mental strain of the climb was practically over, we felt that a little stimulant would do us no harm. Drink and sleep were what we most needed. We almost went to sleep standing up.

After our long spell of over twenty-two hours’ climbing, we had now to devote ourselves to a journey of ten or eleven miles down the Hooker Glacier and the valley at its termination to the Hermitage. There was some little trouble amongst the enormous crevasses and séracs, which, even in the moonlight, were a magnificent sight. We got through the first crevasses by candle-light, and then plodded on down the glacier by the light of the moon. Twice we got blocked, and had to retrace our steps to find a route through the maze of crevasses and broken ice. The sunrise was splendid. The silver of the moon gave place to the grey of dawn, and then the higher snows were flushed with rose and gold, the ice-cap of Mount Stokes being the first to catch the glow. The great ice-paved valley, loath to reveal the secrets of its grandeur, waited yet awhile in the sombre shade. But presently the sun searched the dimmest recesses of the lower crags, blazed upon the gleaming snows, and all the world was filled with light.

But it will be as well to draw a veil over the details of that long, dreary walk—the zigzagging to find a way down through the broken ice; the jumping of many crevasses; the uncertain steps along the crumbling live moraine; and the mechanical, sleepy trudge along the final pathway. Our throats were parched, and, early in the morning, the roar of a waterfall on the range across the valley mocked our thirst; but on the final slopes of the clear ice of the glacier we broke the frozen surface of some pools with our ice-axes and drank mighty draughts.

Hour by hour we plodded on down the valley, lifting our feet almost mechanically, halting at every stream, and falling asleep at every resting-place, till some resolute member of the party would prod the sleepy ones into mechanical action once more. Never, in all my life, have I travelled such long, weary miles. Towards the end of the journey, the one impression fixed indelibly on the brain seemed to be “the Hermitage.” Once across the Hooker River, it was “the Bar,” which loomed large in our minds with a capital B. We pulled ourselves together for the last hundred yards; but I am afraid it was with a rather faltering stride that we reached the winning-post after our long struggle of thirty-six hours from the Bivouac Rock many miles away on the other side of the great range. Turner, for sartorial reasons, had to make a bee-line for his bedroom; but the three New Zealanders went boldly into the kitchen of the Hermitage and discussed a bottle of wine amidst the congratulations of friend Macdonald and his worthy family. Fyfe and Graham followed this up with ham and eggs and copious draughts of milk. I had a jug of hot milk, a hot bath, and bed. We had not had a wash nor taken off our clothes for several days, and were now in a position to fully appreciate the luxuries of civilization. I slept till the dinner-gong woke me in the evening, and as there was not time to dress I had dinner in bed. Later on, Fyfe, Graham, and Clark came into my room, and we climbed the mountain over again.

On the way down the Hooker I had sworn to myself that I would never climb another peak; but so strange an animal is man, and so fascinating is his most glorious sport, that no sooner had we recovered from our exertions than we now immediately began to discuss plans for the ascent of Mount Sefton! But next day, through the glasses, we could plainly see great icicles hanging from the rocks on the main arête. The ridge was plastered with ice, and we had no immediate desire to repeat the performance we had just gone through.

THE END