Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/166

118 so dangerous on a gentle slope, and one can often waddle or half glissade down in the midst of one with perfect safety, though they make one uncomfortably wet.

Cornices are a frequent source of danger to the mountaineer. They are formed by the snow drifting over one edge of a ridge and forming a hanging mass. It is needless to say that one soon learns to walk some feet away from the outer edge of a cornice, for after poking one's axe-handle through three feet of snow, and peeping through a blue hole down a precipice of perhaps 1,000 feet or so, it is not difficult to fancy what the result would be should the cornice break.