Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/29

Rh glorious mass of Mount Sefton, showering down avalanches upon the glacier. On our left the shingle slips from the rotten and crumbling crags of the Sealy Range. It is possible for tourists who are good walkers to reach the head of this glacier, which is seven and a half miles long and about one mile broad, in one day. The moraine gives way to the clear ice some three miles or so from the terminal face. Now we return and make a fresh start up the Hooker Valley due northwards from the Hermitage.

Crossing the Mueller Glacier we walk through a perfect garden of lilies (ranunculus Lyallii), celmisias, 'Spaniards,' and an endless variety of sub-alpine plants, for a distance of about one mile from the northern side of the Mueller Glacier, when we come to the terminal moraine-covered face of the Hooker Glacier.

On our right rises up the bold and verdure clad snow-topped Mount Cook Range, Mount Wakefield (6,561 feet), Mount Mabel (6,868 feet), Mount Rosa (6,987 feet), and a nameless peak (7,540 feet) being the principal points of interest. On our left is the northern continuation of the ridge of Mount Sefton, known as the Moorhouse Range, part of the main chain of the Southern Alps. Several secondary glaciers descend from the slopes, but do not reach the bed of the valley below, which is filled from side to side with the Hooker Glacier.

Proceeding up the surface of the glacier we get on to the clear ice, and now on either bank the mountains rise to a great height. On the right Aorangi suddenly rears itself, from a point known as the Ball Saddle (7,500 feet), to 12,349 feet in one stupendous rocky