Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/112

74 discern the whole extent of the Mueller Glacier and most of that of the Hooker.

Bearing away southwards to avoid the crevassed parts of the slope below, we were soon enjoying a merry glissade—sometimes sitting, sometimes standing, whizzing down in a cloud of snow which curled up from our feet and showered down upon us.

Ah, the exhilaration of a good glissade! How you seem to fly through the air and cleave the fast-speeding surface! How the snow hisses and the axe grinds! How the excitement thrills you as you look out for danger ahead, or rushing avalanches behind! There is nothing to touch it—switchback railway, going downhill on a bicycle, skating—all are far behind.

In a quarter of an hour we entered a rocky gorge, and still down we sped on the snow, winding about in and out between magnificent rock precipices, until before another fifteen minutes had elapsed we emerged into the Hooker Valley, having come down 4,000 feet under half an hour.

Turning down the valley we kept to the old lateral moraine of the Hooker Glacier (which stands 235 feet above the present level of the glacier), and found it good walking.

Once more, however, fortune forsook us, and an enemy in the shape of a south-west gale, accompanied with heavy rain, met us, against which at times we could scarcely make any headway. But struggling on we crossed the Hooker River on the ice of the Mueller Glacier, which at that time spanned it, and reached the Hermitage drenched to the skin at 4.30—eight hours from the Ball Glacier.