Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/145

Rh such steep ice slopes is something to remember. First a rattle above, and then 'swish, swish' as the first leaps begin, followed by a 'whir-r-r-r' and a 'hum-m-m-m' as, like a flash of light, a spinning and ricochetting object goes by and is lost to sight over the brink of the precipice below, or perchance is detected spending its momentum on the soft snow slopes 1,000 feet down.

These falls of ice on the upper slopes are not like the hissing avalanches, which sometimes even crawl down the lower snow slopes, but come down with the speed of light, and are calculated to strike terror into the heart of the stoutest-nerved climber.

We crossed the couloir near its head, partly on ice and partly on rocks, amid the gravest peril from showers of ice, and took to the rocks on our left, which were both dangerous and difficult, mainly owing to their being here and there coated with ice. Soon they became quite inaccessible, and we were again forced towards our left on to the ice slopes in the second couloir, and here we found the ice even harder, and we could only make an impression on it with the spike end of our axes. To add to the difficulty, the angle of ascent became steeper, inclining in places to about 60° from the horizontal.

We negotiated this couloir in a similar manner to that below, but water trickling from the overhanging rocks formed awkward hummocks of ice on the slope close to the rocks, over which we thought it almost impossible to climb, and to go out into the middle of the couloir was impossible, owing to falling ice.

Time was quickly passing, and we had a terrible