Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/91

Rh moraine since our return), after having experienced a fruitless hunt of eight hours over rough rocks and ice. This finished the photography, and on the following day Cooper and Low went down to the Hermitage. A finer week for securing negatives could not have been wished for, and the thirty exposures resulted in the best set of mountain views yet obtained in New Zealand.

Now ensued a few days' rest, Dixon, Johnson, and I being left in camp with a week's provisions and designs on Aorangi, when Dixon should have recovered his strength.

Only one short excursion did Johnson and I make, to see if it were possible to reach the Great Plateau from the eastern buttress of the mountain, and so save crossing the Hochstetter Glacier and climbing the Haast Ridge beyond. Our endeavours were fruitless, for at a height of some 6,300 feet we were brought up by a high wall of rock. I still think, nevertheless, that the plateau could be reached in this manner when a good deal of snow fills the rocky couloirs or ditches which in places descend in this wall of rock. Should this be so, it will no doubt prove to be the route of the future for reaching the Linda Glacier and Aorangi.

The rock-climbing here, however, is very dangerous, as the frost has split the rocks up in all directions. One small stone thrown down from above sufficed to start many tons of loose matter in the couloirs, which rattled down to the glacier below, sending up clouds of dust in its descent.