Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/78

50 nearly or quite touches the rocks or ice of the upper side, or sometimes a sound snow bridge may be discovered. These bridges afford the only means of crossing wide bergschrunds. At the place in question a sharp ridge of ice, the lower lip of the bergschrund, led on to a frail snow bridge with a dip of some six feet or so in the centre, over a bottomless abyss some fifteen feet wide.

Dixon cut steps along the ice ridge, having first to remove a foot of fresh snow from the surface, and then we walked this novel tight rope, the bergschrund on our left and steep ice slopes on our right, and crossed the bridge in safety to a small ledge of ice where there was only just room for three to stand. Could we proceed? The rocks above were very bad and ice-coated. I went at them, clearing the inch or so of ice to get my fingers into chinks in the rock, and 'squirming' up on my stomach, clinging with toes and fingers, and feeling disposed to hang on by my teeth or even by the proverbial eyelids, reached, fifty feet above, the crest of the ridge.

I had been in some queer places in the mountains, but, pardon the use of a colonial expression, this one decidedly 'took the cake,' and I shall never forget the start I received when I found myself looking over a sheer upright face of rock on to an unnamed tributary glacier of the Rudolf, 1,000, perhaps 2,000, feet below. I dared not stand up and could scarcely crawl, but lay full length on the steep eastern slope looking over the sharp ridge down the western precipice. On the right, the razor-like arête of rock continued upwards, and seemed almost, if not quite, inaccessible.

Then there was a long-range discussion between