Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/84

66 off. At 4 a.m. sounds of the fire being lighted drifted in, and shortly after I was provided with the luxury of a cup of morning tea. It was a beautiful morning, and at five o'clock we set out with light hearts for our long tramp to the head of the Hooker Glacier. We had to climb down a great wall of moraine to reach the glacier, up which we travelled without difficulty until we arrived at the icefall. Here the crevasses were so bad that it was impossible to force a route through them, so putting on the rope we decided to leave the glacier and climb the rocks on the right. These presented no difficulties to me with only an ice-axe to look after, but to the men, weighted with heavy and ungainly swags, they meant hard work. After about an hour we reached Captain Head's old bivouac, and found some stores he had left behind. As it was half-past nine we had some breakfast, and rested for a while before descending to the glacier again. Once on the glacier our troubles began. Usually above the icefall one may be sure of comparatively smooth going till about the end of March, when the crevasses open out. Unfortunately for us, we found the ice already badly broken up, and it gave us endless trouble looking for bridges over the crevasses. Graham said the glacier was in infinitely worse condition than when he travelled up it with Mr. Earle in March 1909. Once we thought we were cut off altogether and would have to give up the attempt to reach Mount Cook. A great crevasse yawned at our feet, crossing the glacier from side to side; it was too wide to jump, and a bridge was nowhere to be seen. Freeing himself from the rope, Graham followed it along in both directions, while Tom and I waited to hear our fate. In about twenty minutes Graham returned saying there was only one crossing-place, and he would like me to come and look at it; after he had tied himself on the rope again we proceeded to the place. Here the crevasse was about 20 feet wide, with sheer sides of blue-green ice, and apparently bottomless; over this chasm was