Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/162

126 For ten minutes we luxuriated in its warmth, while we picked out a route up the sharp arête of the Silberhorn. From our position we could also take careful note of the Linda route up the north-east face of Mount Cook. This looked in such excellent condition that we were almost tempted to abandon Mount Tasman and see if it was not possible to complete the Rev. S. Green's route to the summit of Mount Cook. It is a curious fact that in spite of his statement that he believed he had found the best and most practicable route to the summit, his is the one route by which Mount Cook has never been successfully ascended. Time and again Messrs. Mannering and Dixson have attempted it, only to be driven back the extra step-cutting involved by trying to take the short cut up the couloir, between the last rocks leading to the eastern arête. The couloir ought to be soft snow, but somehow it invariably turns out to be hard ice, and is much more troublesome than the longer traverse, from the base of the rocks across the steep snow slope and directly up the east arête. Finally we decided we had had enough of Mount Cook for one season, and turned our attention once more to the Silberhorn. Perhaps it would be as well to explain here that the Silberhorn and Mount Tasman, which are always spoken of as one mountain, are really two distinct peaks. The easiest route up Mount Tasman, or rather the only one so far attempted, is to ascend the eastern arête of the Silberhorn to its summit and from there descend a couple of hundred feet to the saddle between the two mountains and continue the ascent up the eastern arête of Mount Tasman.

Our only predecessors on Mount Tasman and the Silberhorn were Messrs. Fitzgerald, Zurbriggen, and Clark, who after several attempts at last succeeded in standing upon the summit in February 1895. No one had since attempted the ascent, so it was their route we were bent on following.