Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/70

46 made his bivouac for his remarkable ascent of the Hochstetter Dome in 1883, when he was accompanied by his wife and one porter—an ascent that took twenty-seven hours of constant ice and snow work. This excursion would effect the double purpose of giving us some practice in ice work, and of securing a fine set of views.

The day was gloriously fine, and we felt our spirits rise as we scrambled over the massive lateral moraine of the Ball Glacier, across the glacier itself—which, by-the-by, shows very dirty ice at this point, being laden with rocks brought down many years since in the avalanches from the great ice-seamed crags of Aorangi, which towered in lofty grandeur above us—then over the medial moraine between the Ball and Hochstetter Glaciers, where a halt was made, and views of Aorangi and the Hochstetter ice-fall were secured.

Once more we stood before this marvellous piece of Nature's handiwork, again we heard the thunder of the avalanches, again we saw the glinting, bristling séracs, and gazed in silence and admiration on the ice-fall of the Hochstetter.

Crossing the Hochstetter we struck up the medial moraine between that and the Tasman, straight for the point of De la Bêche.

The best walking on the New Zealand glaciers is almost invariably found upon the margin of the medial moraine close to where it joins the clear ice, so that one is travelling over a mixture of ice and rocks. The clear ice is too hummocky and entails much undulating progression, if I may use such an expression, and