Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/307

Rh feet. To an onlooker it must have seemed a mad performance. It certainly was not an easy one; so that when after half an hour we were clear of the rocks and their overhanging icicles, we congratulated ourselves on being safely out of an exceedingly nasty place. We climbed a snow slope leading to the saddle between two peaks, and turning to the left followed the steep arête leading to the higher one. In the process we received a severe buffeting with the wind, which threatened to blow us over the other side. There were times when I could not stand upright against the force of it, being the lightest of the party, so crouched forward and crawled. The gale had excavated a hollow on the west side of the summit, and into this we crept, trying to evade the worst of the icy blast.

We just walked on to the actual summit and off again—it was too bitterly exposed for human beings. Mists were driving round us, being blown apart now and again, and disclosing great banks of white cloud racing before the gale over the low passes, and hurling themselves against the defying walls of the high peaks. The cloud-level was at about 8,000 feet, and out of it towered the summit of Mount Cook like a giant rising from a sea of foam. We managed to take four photographs, and then hastily descended. It caused us a great regret not to follow the ridge from the saddle to the lower peak, which is still virgin; but the weather was so bad we dared not spare the time, knowing the long descent ahead of us. As things turned out we were wise; if we had persisted and been an hour later, we would probably never have returned. From the saddle we followed our footsteps back for half an hour, then turned sharply to the left, and descended a steep snow slope to the brink of the large crevasse that cuts across the western face. The mists rose and fell, giving us an opportunity of discovering a route. Thomson led, as he had been up this face of the