Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/95

Rh I remember well how we resorted to all sorts of dodges to get over the difficulties, taking the snow slopes of the mountain sides here, cutting a few steps there, even going to the length of climbing down into crevasses and crawling under ice blocks. But eventually we passed the worst of the crevasses, and made good time over the smooth, snow-covered surface of the glacier.

The distance from our De la Bêche camp to the saddle must be about six or seven miles, but in the soft and treacherous snow it seemed more like sixty or seventy.

The glare was something dreadful, and soon our faces and hands were of the peculiar chocolate colour which invariably comes under such circumstances. We could not bear the goggles off for an instant. Gradually we rose as we plodded away, now and then stepping over an open crevasse or making a détour to find snow bridges. There are but few crevasses, however, for several miles, only when in the proximity of the saddle where the gradient increases they once more begin to occur.

On either hand fresh beauties opened out; De la Bêche on our left presenting the most wonderful face of sérac ice, streaked here and there with avalanche slopes, whilst on the right Mount Malte Brun—the Matterhorn of New Zealand—reared his great red precipices heavenwards, and further on the Darwin Glacier and Mount Darwin showed in a glorious light their magic splendour.

Now on our left we passed Mount Green, a fine precipitous cone of rocks and ice, and then we rose