Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/146

100 fight to reach the head of the couloir. The rocks now shaded us from the sun's rays, and soon our hats, coats, and the rope were frozen as stiff as boards, while the cold was so intense as to cause the skin of our hands to adhere to the steel of the ice-axes.

It seemed now more than ever a hopeless task to reach the final ice-cap, which we knew could not be far above us; but we silently and doggedly cut away, and at length were rewarded by finding the rocks on our right practicable; taking to them we were soon on their crest, and the ice-cap of the mountain lay straight before us. An easy bit of rock-climbing led up to the slopes, which we found to be covered with a peculiar form of lumpy and frozen drifted snow. At the top of the rocks we looked around in vain for Mr. Green's cairn, with his handkerchief and Kaufmann's matchbox, left on the occasion of their ascent in March 1882. Doubtless they have either been long since swept away by falling ice or were buried in the terminal of the ice slope, which in December would encroach farther down upon the rocks than in March.

Dixon now counselled a retreat, arguing that we had virtually overcome all the difficulties and had only the final and easy slope to cut up; but I persuaded him to stay a little longer and make a push for it, or at least as much of a push as we were capable of making.

It was half-past five. Four hours and a half we had been toiling from the head of the Linda Glacier, thirteen hours and a half from our bivouac, without any halt to speak of. A wind began to blow from the north-west, adding fresh cause for anxiety about the descent. One thing was certain—if we wanted to get