Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/271

 prophesied that it would not be done again for twenty years, if ever. From the other side of the world I shall eagerly watch and wait in the years to come to see who will be the next party to thread their way over that long icy ridge, which may well prove a terrifying pathway not to be undertaken lightly by even the most dauntless mountaineer. Graham has always declared that I do not realize what a great climb we have accomplished; that I took it all so lightly and easily. If this is so it is simply because I have no standard with which to compare it; I know nothing of mountains except the New Zealand Alps, and until I climb elsewhere how can I realize that successes which have come to me easily are perhaps phenomenal? A letter of congratulation from a member of the English A.C. the other day made me realize this as perhaps I have never done before. The writer is an experienced climber who knows pretty well all the great mountain ranges in the world—I quote his letter because it is a comparison which my own so far limited experience leaves me unable to make: "That ridge of Mount Cook would be shuddersome at the best of times. I have walked underneath it on both sides, and looked along it from the top, and I can confidently say that there is not such a ridge in Switzerland; mixed rock and ice perhaps, such as the Teufelsgrat of the Taschhorn and maybe others, but nowhere that endless stretch of knife-edge snow perched far above everything else in the world as it must seem. It was daring to tackle that long descent by the Linda Glacier too, instead of the west face—the precipice on the Tasman side must be appalling, though of course one never thinks very much of that when one is actually climbing." This is the opinion of a fine climber of wide experience, and I would like to record beneath it my gratitude and appreciation to my guides, Peter Graham and David Thomson, who staked their lives and reputations on the