Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/61

Rh camp, weakened though we were in strength and supplies.

Already we felt that our chance of ascending Aorangi was gone, for the snow lay thick on the upper peaks and avalanches were of common occurrence; yet we doggedly pushed on, determined not to turn without a struggle.

Leaping from rock to rock, avoiding the scrub and Spaniards by sticking to the moraine slopes, and scrambling over great tali of boulders which came from the mountain sides, by evening we reached our destination (the Ball Glacier), and finding the surveyor's chain, tent poles, and hatchet—left by Fox and myself the previous season—in good order, we quickly had a comfortable camp pitched. A small army of mountain parrots or keas soon assembled, and the unerring shanghai procured grilled kea for supper.

Next morning broke gloriously fine, and by 7 we were away with blanket-bags, three days' 'tucker,' and a change of warm clothing, intending to reach Green's bivouac on the Haast Ridge that evening, and to make a final dash at Aorangi on the day following.

Once again we plunged into all those pleasures and joys of mountaineering. Again we felt the clear ice of the beautiful Hochstetter Glacier crunch under our iron-shod feet. Now we were away from all the hum-drum cares of life, from the misery of flooded camps, in the free mountain air, with the stupendous ice-falls and the majestic peaks all around. We seemed to breathe a heavenly atmosphere, to live a new life in another and a better world. Where is the man who can come into