Chapter IV: The Conquering of Aorangi

“If at first you don’t succeed,
Try, try again.”

Green’s memorable visit in 1882, in company with two Swiss climbers, Emil Boss and Ulrich Kaufmann, fired the enthusiasm of a number of young New Zealanders, who hoped to succeed, where he had just failed, in reaching the actual summit of Mount Cook, or, to give it its more romantic Maori name, Aorangi. But Aorangi, entrenched behind his ramparts of ice and frowning buttresses of rock, bade defiance to these inexperienced though daring Colonial pioneers in Southern mountaineering. However, though we had to contend against many difficulties, we were gradually learning the craft, and there were several determined, if possible, to win for New Zealand the honour of the first ascent of New Zealand’s highest mountain. Some there were who swore not to raise the siege so long as Aorangi remained unconquered, and stout hearts and sturdy thews remained to battle with the difficulties. Up to the time when the writer took a hand in the game some ten expeditions had been organized, and the peak still remained unclimbed. In 1894, after the failure of Mannering’s party in the previous season, a solemn compact was entered into by three members of the New Zealand Alpine Club to spend their summer holidays in making one more attempt to reach the summit of Aorangi; and, spurred into activity by the news that an English climber, with the famous Zurbriggen, was to leave England in October on an expedition to the Southern Alps, a party was hurriedly organized, and arrangements made by telegraph. Many members who were anxious to take part in the expedition could not, however, for one reason or another, get away, and Dixon had no fewer than seven refusals from climbers who had at one time or another expressed their willingness to join him. Finally a party consisting of Mr. M. J. Dixon, Mr. Kenneth Ross, and the writer decided to make the venture, and arranged to meet at Fairlie Creek, the terminus of the railway, on the evening of Monday, November 5th.

On arrival at Timaru we were surprised to find there, awaiting our arrival, Mr. T. C. Fyfe, who we thought was at that moment with Mr. A. P. Harper endeavouring to cross over from the West Coast by way of the Franz Josef and Kron Prinz Rudolph Glaciers into the Tasman. Mr. Adamson, the manager of the Hermitage, was also there. They greeted us with rather depressing news. Fyfe was doubtful if he could join our party, and Adamson assured us that we could look for neither provisions nor assistance at the Hermitage, which was practically closed “pending reconstruction of the company.” On every hand, too, we were met with discouraging cries of “Much too early in the season for climbing”; but, confident in our own judgment, we kept on our way undaunted, and at Fairlie Creek, found Dixon awaiting us with a wagonette and three horses, which he had chartered for £10 to take us to Mount Cook and back. We waited only for tea at Fairlie, and proceeded at once on the first stage of our journey—fourteen miles—to Burke’s Pass. Arriving there at 10.30 p.m., we compared notes as to provisions, equipment, etc., and sorting out what we did not require, each man packed his swag for the expedition. On Tuesday we were up at 4 a.m. and on the road three-quarters of an hour later. There had been a garish red sky just after the dawn, and now, as we began to ascend the slopes of the pass, a puff of warm wind met us and gave ominous warning that a nor’-wester was brewing. The nor’-wester, which is equivalent to the dreaded Föhn wind of the Swiss Alps, is the bane of New Zealand climbers, as it generally ends in rain, and often softens the snow and brings down innumerable avalanches from the higher slopes. We could only hope that this was a false alarm, or that, if a nor’-wester did come, it would be a baby one and blow over before we reached our objective. Scarcely could we realize that the child would grow into the giant he subsequently did.

We reached Lake Tekapo at 9.30 a.m., and, after stopping to get a shoe on one of the horses, resumed our journey. At Braemar we intended to camp for the night, in the hope that the Tasman River would be fordable early next morning. Shortly after midday we halted at a mountain stream to feed the horses and boil the billy for lunch. All around us were undeniable signs of the older glacial period, when the Godley and the Great Tasman Glaciers met on the Mackenzie Plains, and, uniting, flowed on in one grand ice-stream towards the Pacific. On either side were vestiges of old moraines, now grass-grown, and great rocks that had come down on the ice from the higher mountains.

We arrived at the Tasman River early in the afternoon, and, finding it low, decided to go on past Braemar and cross opposite Glentanner station. The river-bed here is some four miles across, and the water flows over it in several branches. We had some difficulty in finding a ford, and, at one spot, got into the treacherous quicksands in which the bed of this dreaded river abounds. In a moment the horses were up to their knees in it, and the trap wheels sank nearly to the axle. Having no desire to repeat Mr. Green’s experience of leaving his wagonette in the river, the whip was vigorously applied, and, the horses willingly responding, we just succeeded in getting through to firm ground. Finally we managed to cross the many-channelled river without accident, and halted at Glentanner sheep-station, where we were hospitably entertained. Here inquiries were made as to whether we could obtain a porter to assist with the swagging, and were gratified to find that the manager was that day paying off a station hand who would be likely to afford the necessary assistance. The manager was empowered to engage him in our behalf and to send him on after us, his wages to be £1 a day. We also added to our provisions here by purchasing half a sheep, and after a cup of tea and a spell of three-quarters of an hour, proceeded on our journey up the Tasman Valley, intending to camp that night near the wire rope that spans the Hooker River at the end of the southern spur of Mount Cook. By the time we got to Birch Hill the weather was so threatening that it was deemed wise to call a halt, and no sooner had we got the things out of the trap than the rain started to come down in torrents.

Next morning by seven o’clock the storm had cleared sufficiently to allow us to proceed, so, after a hurried breakfast, we started off in the direction of the Hooker River, first taking the precaution of getting the shepherd to kill a sheep to take up to Green’s Fifth Camp in case we should be delayed there by bad weather. The ground became rougher and rougher as the journey progressed, and, at last, we were brought to a dead stop through breaking the pole of our wagonette. This caused a vexatious delay, as every hour now was valuable, seeing that it was our intention to push on past the Hermitage and the hut at Green’s Fifth Camp, fourteen miles farther on, and pitch our tent some miles up the glacier at the foot of the Spur, below the Mount Cook Bivouac. However, there was nothing for it but to set to at once and repair the damage, and pack our belongings on one of the horses, to the cage on the wire rope that spanned the Hooker River. Accordingly, the horses were quickly unharnessed, and Dixon and our Jehu, on the other two horses, galloped up to the Hermitage for material to splice the pole, while Kenneth and I, with our porter—who had joined us the night before at Birch Hill—packed all our things up to the Hooker River. Arrived here, however, we found the manila rope, with which the cage is worked, broken, and one end jammed amongst the boulders in the bed of the river on the other side. Kenneth and I, however, got into the cage, pulled ourselves across, hand-over-hand on the cable, and secured the broken rope, which we spliced to the one on the other side. In this way we restored communication, though, owing to the rope’s being single instead of double, the cage could be pulled across only with great exertion. All these, however, were minor difficulties, which we brushed lightly aside, determined that no ordinary obstacle should hinder our ultimate progress. Just as we were preparing to get the swags across by means of the cage, we espied Dixon leading the old pack-horse from the Hermitage in our direction, and, as we could trust this animal in the river, we waited, and, transferring the swags to her, I got one of the other horses and led her across the river. Kenneth and our porter crossed in the cage, the latter being so frightened that he was not able to pull a pound on the rope. Dixon returned to the trap to mend the broken pole, and he and the driver followed us, later, on the other two horses.

The rough journey up to the hut at Green’s Fifth Camp was uneventful. The weather was fine, and the views ahead were strikingly beautiful. Dixon hurried ahead to make a pair of “ski,” which he fashioned in a most ingenious manner out of a couple of long palings and two short pieces of zinc. We were depending on these “ski” to take us safely and expeditiously over the dreaded deep snow of the great plateau above the Hochstetter Ice Fall. They were simply snow-shoes made of wood four inches wide and six feet long, and similar to those used by Nansen in his expedition across Greenland. Dixon had, the previous year, left two pairs on the rocks of the Haast Ridge above the plateau, and these we hoped to find, the third pair being required for Kenneth. A halt was called at the hut for tea, and, late in the evening, we started with the intention of crossing the Ball and Hochstetter Glaciers and camping at the foot of the Tasman Spur. It was a fine night, but no sooner had we shouldered our swags than ominous clouds were seen swirling over the shoulder of Aorangi. Dixon doubted the wisdom of proceeding, and our porter said he would much sooner wait till morning; but after a little deliberation I urged an advance, and slowly, in single file, the expedition trooped over the rough moraine hillocks of the Ball Glacier. The clear ice of the Hochstetter Glacier was soon reached, and, crossing this obliquely, we encountered another moraine, over the loose stones of which we slowly toiled with our heavy swags. We arrived at the Tasman Spur in a couple of hours, and, in a little hollow of the old moraine of the glacier, where grew some snow grass, veronica, and Alpine plants, we pitched our tent, after first removing the larger stones so that we might have a fairly comfortable bed. It was a fine night, and the snow-capped mountains on the left towering steeply above, with De la Bêche far up the glacier in front of us, formed a picture of exquisite loveliness in the brilliant moonlight. Opposite, across the valley, frowned the gaunt, rock buttresses of the Malte Brun Range. We spent our first night comfortably enough under canvas, and slept soundly till daylight.

Next morning the weather was again fine, and our spirits rose with the thermometer. If we could only catch the upper snows in good order our chances of climbing the peak were excellent. We were, however, soon to meet with our first disappointment. As we were preparing breakfast our porter, who, like Falstaff, was somewhat fat and scant o’ breath, and who had been sitting apart on a boulder on the old moraine, having finished his meditations, rose, and approaching me with some degree of deference, explained that he had come to the conclusion that he would not be of much more use to us. He was “all over pains,” and he had a “bad ’eadache.” Assuming, for the moment, a cheerful outward manner, though being inwardly somewhat indignant and sad at heart, I assured him that if he but came with us a few thousand feet higher, with a good swag on his back, his pains would quickly vanish, and, moreover, that the rarefied air in the region of the Mount Cook Bivouac was an infallible cure for ’eadache, and indeed for all the other ills that flesh is heir to. But my pleading was in vain. He cast one scared look at the frowning crags above, and incontinently fled. He even refused breakfast. Like another historical person—but for quite a different reason—he stayed not for brake and he stopped not for stone. With his blanket on his back, he made a bee-line for the hut, whence he hoped to get the company of our driver back to the Hermitage. The driver, however, had already started on his journey. A less determined man might now have paused a moment in his onward flight; but not so our Falstaffian burden-bearer. With all his pains and aches forgotten, he now continued his headlong retreat down the valley. Eventually he caught sight of the driver, whereupon he began to shout and bellow to attract his attention. The latter, good man, thinking some terrible accident had happened, stopped and rode back to meet the messenger of supposed evil report, and in the charitableness of his heart gave the deserter one of our horses wherewith to continue his flight. The Esk River, which the historical personage already referred to swam, is but a minor obstacle as compared with the turbulent Hooker, and our porter, though he had a good horse under him, was nearly washed away in the foaming torrent. Next day he continued his journey down the Tasman Valley in our wagonette, and arrived at the hotel at Lake Pukaki a sadder and a quieter man; but, falling in with two station hands, who primed him with bad liquor, he, once more, waxed eloquent, and even claimed for himself the ascent of Mount Cook! For a time he was quite the hero of the countryside; but each glass of whisky that he swallowed added some more Munchausen-like adventure to his tale, till the sum-total became so overwhelmingly great that even his boon companions, though they could swallow the whisky, could not swallow the story. It was, indeed, a terrible tale of privation and adventure that he had to tell; but, finally, he contradicted himself to such an extent that he had reluctantly to admit that he had not even set foot on the mountain! But he had his revenge. The men he had been engaged by were “mad, sir—mad as ’atters! They were going up a place as steep as the side of a ’ouse, and there was a young fellow named Ross among them who was the maddest of the lot!” Later, our porter, with his swag on his back, a bottle of whisky in his pocket, and a liberal supply of the fiery beverage inside him, wandered out into the night, lost his way on the tussock plains, and, having slept off the potion, returned next day minus all his belongings. Then he disappeared altogether, and history does not record whether he ever returned again to those dread Alpine regions; but the chances are that he preferred the delights of civilization—or the flesh-pots of the country “pub”—to the joys of Alpine climbing.

We had many a laugh, afterwards, over our adventure with the burly porter, but, now, as we looked somewhat ruefully at the extra pack he had left behind him, and thought of the added burden that would soon be upon our own shoulders, we began to realize the magnitude of our undertaking and to curse his craven heart. We did not, however, let this little adventure spoil our breakfast, and congratulated ourselves that, in three days from Dunedin, we had established a camp at the foot of the slopes from which Green, after many difficulties and much delay, commenced his climb—a feat not easy of accomplishment in those days. But the hardest toil yet lay before us, and the memory of that first climb to the Bivouac, encumbered as we were with packs weighing close upon 50 lb. each, does not fade with the passing years.

Occasionally there would be a bit of crag work, and at last we entered a long snow couloir up which we kicked steps in the direction of the Bivouac. This couloir got steeper at the top, and Dixon, thinking to make better progress, took to the rocks on the right, while Kenneth and I tried the rocks on the left. Preferring the snow work, we were soon back in the couloir, and lost sight of Dixon. A quarter of an hour later a jodel from us brought forth an answering shout from below, and presently Dixon’s head appeared above a pinnacle of rock on our right. The spare rope which he had in his swag had been taken out and was now coiled round his shoulder, so we knew he had been in difficulties. Making a traverse of the snow slope, he was soon in our steps, and we learned that he had got into rather an awkward corner, from which he had to descend by means of the Alpine rope. The snow slope above grew steeper and then eased off on to steep rocks, up which lay the route. Dixon led and Kenneth followed, but was quickly in difficulties, for the long “ski” which were attached to his swag would, in spite of everything, catch in the rocks, rendering the situation risky, and the language even more so.

It will perhaps be well to draw a veil over the various acrobatic feats that we performed, and round off the story by stating that we reached the Bivouac Rock at 5 p.m. Under the lee of this rock we found a little flat place, about six feet square, on the crest of a narrow, exposed ridge. On the one side a snow couloir, some 2000 feet long, sloped steeply down between the precipices to the foot of the Hochstetter Ice Fall. Northwards the ridge fell away toward the Tasman Glacier. The scenery was magnificent. Immediately above our camp were some splintered towers of rock, from which is obtained a glorious view of the upper slopes of Aorangi. Northward Haast and Haidinger, clothed with sérac and ice-fall, tower high in heaven; and thence the eye wanders round to De la Bêche—most beautiful of mountains—Elie de Beaumont, and the magnificent sweep of the Upper Tasman, leading to the Lendenfeld Saddle and the Hochstetter Dome. Across the valley were the giant rock peaks of the Malte Brun Range, catching the rosy tint of dying day; and below our Bivouac the battlements of the long rocky ridge leading down to the deep valley in which the middle portion of the great Tasman Glacier, with its streams of moraine and white ice, stretched itself in the deepening gloom of evening.

Dixon expected to find the Bivouac snowed up so early in the season, and he had carried up a short-handled shovel with a view to digging out the _cache_ of provisions left there the previous season. To our joy, however, it was found almost entirely free from snow, and the tinned meats, fish, etc., to all appearance, in good order.

Kenneth and I now divided the swags and got out some provisions for a snack, while Dixon went up over the rocks in an unsuccessful search for water. We had arrived rather late in the day, and no rock could be found retaining sufficient heat from the sun’s rays to melt the snow we spread on it. The result was that Dixon returned with only about an inch of water in the billy. This we apportioned, and, at 7.30 p.m., once more shouldered our swags and started on the climb to the Glacier Dome. But it was now found that the snow was frozen so hard that we should have to cut steps in it all the way to the Dome, and as we saw no prospect of being able to do this with swags on our backs, and to come back for the rest of our burdens in time to make a camp on the great plateau beyond the Dome, we decided to camp for the night at the Bivouac. It was well we did so decide.

As the evening wore on it began to grow cold, so Kenneth and I set about pitching the Whymper tent, while Dixon went on cutting steps up to the Dome to make the ascent the easier in the morning. Owing to the limited space at our disposal, it was rather a difficult matter to pitch the tent satisfactorily, but we made a fairly good job of it, and, getting inside, set about melting some snow over the Aurora lamp to make a cup of Liebig for Dixon. This was rather unpleasant work, as the lamp was out of order and smoked badly. The Primus stove used so effectively in after years in our Alps, and also by my friends Scott and Shackleton in the Antarctic, were not then on the market in N.Z. Our lamp smoked and went out, and was relit, and smoked and went out again. The one thing it seemed incapable of was the generation of heat! Finally, the whole thing caught fire, and in order to avoid an explosion we threw it outside and extinguished the flames in the snow. Luckily I had with me a small spirit lamp, and, though it was not made for burning kerosene, we managed, by the aid of this, to melt some snow and brew three small pannikins of Liebig. Then we sat down and waited patiently for Dixon’s return. About half-past nine we began to feel a little anxious, and I was just getting on my boots to go out and look for him when we heard the clink of his ice-axe on the rocks above the tent. He had been gone two and a half hours, and had done good work. He was rewarded with the Liebig that had been kept warm for him for three-quarters of an hour, and then we, all three, turned into our sleeping bags, intending to make a very early start in the morning. We talked over our plans, and arranged, finally, to carry heavy swags up over the Glacier Dome and on to the plateau, camping eventually on the ice of the Linda Glacier at an altitude of about 10,000 feet above sea-level. Should there be any danger of avalanches from Mount Tasman in crossing the plateau, we decided to travel by night and select a safe camp in the daytime. The mountain was, however, singularly free from avalanches, and we began to think our chances of scaling the peak were of the rosiest.