THREE ON AN ALP.

Evening Star, Issue 8267, 12 July 1890, Page 1 (Supplement)

THREE ON AN ALP.

BEING AN ACCOUNT OF A CLIMB AND OF SOME OBSERVATIONS ON MOUNT SEALEY. [By Malcolm Ross.) One morning after our return from the Tasman Glacier I found myself basking in the warm sunshine in front cf the Hermitage, dividing my attention for the most part between a book and a cigar, and occasionally gazing up at the ice cap of Mount Sefton, from which every now and then great masses broke away and came tumbling over the precipicea with thundering roar. I was joined by Mr Huddleston. We chatted for a white about things in general —among them, the prospects of the district in connection with tho tourist traffic, and the feasibility of establishing an Alpine Club in New Zealand—after which the conversation turned on glaciers. On my expressing a desire to learn something more of the Mueller Glacier system, Mr Huddleston suggested I should satisfy myself by a climb on the Sealcy Range, and, if time permitted, by climbing Mount Sealey, an expedition that had not hitherto been attempted. Accordingly next morning, taking some luncheon and an alpenstock, I started off on my expedition. Mona, Mr Huddleston'a little lox-terrier, always eager for a mountain scramble, came with me.

Tt was a glorious morning, and the glaciers at the head of the"Hooker were gleaming in the sunlight, while the long southern arete, right up to the summit, was in shadow, and there was one patch of glistening white on the top of St. David's Dome. Mount Sefton, with the broken ice of its banging glaciers, was resplendent in the full sunshine ; and every now and then a great avalanche thundered down from the highest slopes. The mocking birds were singing in chorus to the tuis' liquid song, and the beat of the hammers on the roof of the new buildings at the Hermitage was borne up through tho still air. Mona, scorning the amenities of the locality, spent a good half hour in seeking after the destruction of a weka that had chanced across her path, and, b?ing unsuccessful in the hunt, once more condescended to resume the climb. We toiled ou iu the broiling sun, together, and, after an hour and a half of pretty stiff climbing, succeeded in reaching an elevation of about 5,000 ft. Halting for a spell at a little lakelet on the shoulder of the mountain,'l chanced to look up, and was surprised to find someone on the rocks above me. Ha turned out to be a plumber lad who was engaged on the works r„t the Hermitage, and, as I depicted the projected expedition in glowing colors, and offered to share my luncheon with him, he was easily persuaded to accompany mo. We %vere now a merry party of three—myaelf, the plumber boy, and the dog ! We noon gained tho summit of the range, about C,oooft ; and then, consulting my map, I found that Mount Sealey was miles away, at the other end of tho glacier, near the head of the Mueller, and just overlooking the Metelille Glacier. However, wo decided to go on and see what like the route was. After o. while we found that by keeping along tho top of the range we would make but nlow progress, as there were several peaks where the rooks were rather steep, so we cried a halt and scanned the side of the mountain ahead through the binocular. Tho best way seemed to be to descend about a thousand feet to the Mueller Glacier, and then to ascend again over au easy slope to an unnamed glacier that crowned tin: tort of the range just below the final peal; of Mount Sealey. Having decided upon this course, we lost no time in setting off, and clambered down over some loose rocks, which brought us on to a siiort snow slope. Though the ice was rather slippery, we managed to cro3S without the aid of ice axes. There was Boran easy rock work following this, and then another slippery snow slope, iu crossing which great caution had to be exercised, an an involuntary glissade would have landed us on some very bad rocks two or . three hundred ftot below. Using my alpenstock against the face I went straight across the slope; but my companion, who was evidently rather afraid of the snow, kept lower down, preferring the safer footing which the rookE afforded. The hi3t nek 3 leading up to the glacier on the top of tho range were of a peculiar reddish color and worn somewhat smooth, no doubt by the action of avalanches, which would be rather frequent here in the springtime when the snows were melting. We were sorely tried with thirst, as it was a blazing hot day and there was no water, so we resorted to the expedient of spreading some snow on the warm rocks and allowing the water, as it trickled down, to fall into a hollow below. In this way we got a little water, which proved very acceptable as wc sat discussing our luncheon. We spent only a quarter of an hour here as time was valuable, and, keeping o, direct course upwards, we now soon found ourselves on tho edge of the glacier which we had seen lower down, and which we now observed stretched up toward Mount Sealey for a distance of about three-quarters of a mile. There was no difficulty in crossing this glacier, S3 it was nearly level in places, and the crevasses were easily avoided. In one place a surface stream, which ran for somo distance over the ice and then disappeared into a crevasse waa hailed with welcome, and we stopped to quench our thirst with its icy cold waters. While we waited a splendid avalanche shot over the Mount Sefton precipice nearest us and went thundering down with awful roar, not stopping till ifc bad reached the edge of the Mueller Glacier thousands of feet below. As we proceeded the glacier rose with a fine sweep curving over on to a small ice plateau. We proceeded quickly, stopping oDly now and then for a moment to admire the glorious panorama of mountain scenery which increased in grandeur and extent the farther we proceeded. At length wo halted at the foot of the snow slope, and found that it blocked our progress, as it was too steep to be climbed without cutting steps, and not knowing that there would be any icework to do, I had unfortunately left my axe behind. Looking to the right we observed a way out of the difficulty. A narrow rock aWUe which tapered off towards the Mueller at its lower end ran right up to what appeared to be tho final peak, and we made direct for this. It was a steep pull at first, but the rocks afforded good hand grips, and it was safe climbing. Then wo proceeded along the top of the arete, which wa3 so sharp in oue or two places that we almost crawled along on hands and knees, and had to use tho utmost caution. On onr left the rocks sloped away to the unnamed glacier over which we had come. On our right we looked sheer down on to the Metelille Glacier, hundreds of feet below. Some loopo rocks which I dislodged with my foot went clattering headloDg down the cliff, and stopped not in their mad career till they fell in splinters on the ice below. Onward we toiled, and ceased not till half-past four o'clock in tho evening, when we halted upon a sharp peak, from which we beheld the most wonderful view that in all my alpine wanderings I had ever seen. And to think that we were the first to make that journey 1 To think that underneath our feet was ground where never man had trod before .' It was a glorious afternoon. From east to west, from north to south we scanned the sky, and not a cloud was there — nothing but the vast illimitable blue. Below us the Metelille Glacier curved gently down for some distance, and then poured its ice in a broken mass into the Mueller. Far down, 4,000 ft below, winding through the valley, we could see the clear ice of the Mueller broken up here and there into innumerable crevasses. From the bource of the Mueller Glacier the eye swept round the peaks and glaciers of the Moorhouse Range to Mount Sefton, rearing his ice-seamed sides over 10,000 ft in air. Then the fine peak of Mount Stokes, and the great St. David's Dome, with its snows glistening in the sunlight, came into view ; and down from their very feet flowed the Hooker Glacier, with the tributary glaciers from the great southern arete of Mount Cook pouring their ice in continuous never-ending streams into it. Over this long rocky ridge appeared the bold form of Haidinger, with his glaciers robed in shadow, save for a little patch of gleaming white on the western slope. Then the Kron Prinz Rndolf Peak and the familiar form of De la BSche, with the Minaret Peaks towering their two cones of spotless white high above all the glaciers. Still farther afield was the beau-

I tiful Elie De Beaumont, flanking the Northeastern side of the Tasman Valley, and juet beyond it the Frau Von Lendenfeldt Glacier,the LendenfeldtSaddle, and the white maas of the Hochstetter Dome, terminating the valley. Down from this came the great ice stream of the Tasman, plainly visible for eighteen miles—down past Elie De Beaumont, curving round between De la Bfoho and Malte Brun with a majestic Ewecp ; then flowing in a straigbter line past the Kron Pricz Rudolf peak, and Mount 3 Jervois, and Spencer, and Haidinger, and Haast, receiving tribute from glacier after glacier, till it Btopped far down the valley, melting slowly, and issuing forth in another form—the Tasman River. Flanking it to the eastward was the Ma!to Brun Range, steep and rocky ; and beyond that, in the hollow between it and the Liebig Range, in dim shadow, lay the Great Murchison Glacier. What a glorious panorama of mountain scenery it was ! Dozens of peaks from S.OCIOft to 12,000 ft high and between forty and fifty glaciers wero'iu sight at one time ; and right in the midst of it all rose the buttresses of Aorangi, pile on pile, till where the final peak, its snowy crest 12,340 ft in air, glinted in the settiug_ sun. Miles and miles away in the direction of Timaru a gray bazo hung o'er the sea; and midway, in the tussocky plaiDs of the, Mackenzie Country, lay tne beautiful Jake Tckapo, like some huge turquoise, glorious in a golden setting. It was grand to sit up here on the mountain top as the sun sank seaward. One began to realise that there were sermons in stones. I had preached to me, that day, a sermon that I shall never forget, and in a grander cathedral than ever mortal dreamt of. Ko marble floor was

ever «o white U3 the glacier in sunlight at our feet: no cathedral do:ne of such immensity A3 the blue aky above ; while yonder, receding Lack, one grander than the other, towering up towards the blue dome, were the massive, rocky columns of the mountain peaks. Musing on all this, I felt myself growsmal!; and smaller still when I began to think cf prehistoric times, when greater glaciers clothed those dull far away plain?, and higher peaks " towered vast to Heaven." How long since the great ice sec. had poured its vast moraine beyond the lakes? How long since the giant moa had walked the oceauward plains? and how long would it all continue ? The mills of the gods ground not slowly here. The mountains were crumbling before our eye?, as tho rock avr.lanches rattled adown tbeir bare sides. Lower, the beautiful liiley clothed their nakedness, with capros m as, and veronica.':, and cenesias in great var lc ty. Higher up the silvery-leaved cclmcsias climbed, and higher : still, in clefts among th° rocks, the rarer eidelweiss found a home, to blossom in the summer time when the snows were one?, .".gain in cloudland. But we were above nil thece, in tho midst of a wilderness of rock, with black mountains crowned with gleaming ice caps, rising into the dark blue depth:-; of Heaven—almost too fair, it seemed, for this world. It was sad to think how little wc knew of it p,IJ ; sad also to think that only two men in all the world had seen this glorious panorama—myself and the plumber boy from the Hermitage ; sv.d too to live in it only for such brief time, and to have to leave it all behind. How long it had been, and how long it was to be,"we could not ! tell. Suns would rise and eet, and moons would wax and wane, bathing yonder distant lake with a tilve'ry light for arei yot to come ; -aid, in" a few brief years, the hones of n? poor mortals would be mouldering in the dust that had been carried down from these self-same mountain topsreonsbefore. And yet there was something elevating and ennobling in it all. Perched up here on our high crag, far away from the hum of cities, we could learn great lessons. "The earth had ceased for ! us to be a weltering chaos. We walked in | the great hall of life looking up and around rsvercntialiy. Nothing was despicable—.-.11 was meaningful! ; nothing was small, but as part of a whole whoso beginning and end we knew not," It would he pleasant to stay _ up here longer, pleasant" to dream on in the evening " when the c'ouds lift themselves like gates, and the red lights shine through them." We had come to such a place as Carlyle'w Teufelsdn'ickh nf'or the final catastrophe with the fair girl Bltunine. Yonder were the "stony hollows, along straight passes, traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls of rock." There were " broken shaggy ehacms and huge fragments." " Valleys in complex branchings are suddenly or slowly arranging tlv.-ir descent towards every . qr.arler of the sky. The mountain ranges are beneath our feet, and folded 'together : only the loftier summits look down here and there on a second plain ; lakes aleo lie cle?r and earnest in their solitude. No trace of man now visible, unless, indeed, it were he who fashioned that little visible link 0?" highway here, as would seem, scaling the inaccessible, to unite province with province. But sunwards, lo you ! how it towers sheer up, a world of mountains, the diadem of the mountain region ! A hundred and a hundred savage peaks in the last light of day, all glowing of gold and amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness—there in their silence, in their solitude, even as the night when Noah's deluge first dried ! Beautiful, nay solemn, is tho sudden aspect to the wanderer. We gaze over those (stupendous masses with wonder, almost with long:«g desire. Never till this hour have we known Nature—that she is our mother and divine. And as the ruddy glow fades into clearness in the sky, and the .sjn has now departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, of ' Death and of Life, steak through the'soul ; and we feel as if Death and Life are one, as if the Earth is not dead, as if the Spirit of the Earth has its throne in that splendoi, and our own spirit is therewith holding cummunion."

Dreiiming thuswise, <. n d thinking how near tho great writer of ' Sartor Kesartns' had got to nature, I, too, like poor Teuelsdrockh, found myself suddenly startled. True, there waa no Blumino in gay barouche and four. • No, only an avalanche crashing down from Sefton's 3tcep slopes into the shadowy abyss a thousand feet below. There was a loud roar a3 the great mass broke away from tho edge of the glacier, high up near the final peak, then a long loud rumble like thunder, which gradually died away as the ice-dust leaped in air, and the great seething mass of ice and snow swept onward, like some huge breaker, down the rocky iceseamed sides of the mountain. It was time to retreat, so wo had a last look and turned our faces homeward. We could not climb the steep ice slope without our axes, but we could easily get down it ; so, after telling my companion how to act, we crossed round the end of an ugly-looking bergschrund, and, settling ourselves in good position, made a glorious standing glissade, whizzing down some 300 ft in a few seconds. Thus, from an elevation that it had taken us an hour to gain by the rock arete, we descended without any exertion in less than a minute. We had some more glissading on the snow slopes above the Mueller, and though we missed our way lower down in the dark, we at last succeeded in regaining the Hermitage about an hour after nightfall. My companion was thankful for the darkness. His nether garments were badiy in need of mending in various places, and the sole of one of his boots had been torn partly off during some difficult rock work. He was, however, a plucky fellow and enjoyed his trip, especially the long glissade, which was a new experience for him.

Next day, in company with Annan and Mr Bryars, I set out on an expedition across the Mueller and up tho Hooker Glacier, intending to attempt the ascent of Mount Mabel, 6,868 ft high, on the main southern arGte of Mount Cook. Annan took us across the Mueller at a great pace, and, as I had not quite recovered from my long climb on Mount Sealey, I felt the pace very much, and once or twice was on the point of giving in. Not liking to be beaten, however, I kept pegging away in Annan's footsteps. It was again a very warm day, and I could not resist the temptation of drinking freely of the snow water or of sucking a bit of ice when there was no water at hand. This, of course, made me still weaker; but we pegged away steadily, and after having luncheon about a mile up the Hooker we left the glacier and struck up across the lateral moraine.

Mr Bryars had by this time quite enough of it, and he decided to return, while we commenced the real climb. As it was nearly all rock work we left our ice axes and the rope behind. The mountain side on our left

was covered with thousands of mountain lilies, and there were glorious bunches of eidelweiss growing in the clefts of the rook on every hand. Further up there were some shingle slopes that made climbing arduous work, and at last the culoir up which we went was terminated by a great buttress of overhanging rock. There was, however, a ledge wide enough for one man to walk on at a time, and we had no difficulty in rounding the cliff. We were both rather done up by this time, and once again I wp.s on the point of crying peccavi, when Annan made a discovery which put new heart into ua. This was a few beautiful plants of ranunculus, which were growing right under the cliff. At first we thought we had found a new variety altogether, but subsequent investigation pointed to the fact that the plant was Ranunculus insignvs. The discovery is, however, of some importance, as these plants had never, so far as I could ascertain, previously been seen in the vicinity of Mount Cook. The climbing beyond this point was comparatively easy, over good rocks and an occasional patch of snow. At one place wo came on a curious cleft in the rock, a chasm having been formed by the rock having, through some mysterious agency, been split asunder. In another twenty minutes we were on the very summit of the peak, .and while I sat down and took a few notes and a h ast .y sketch A.unan built a cairn with the loos, o rocks available. The view was again a grand one, but not so comprehensive as the one from Mount Sealcy. We had a nearer view of the Hooker and the dual peak of Mount Cook, and also a splendid v’ BW of the mountains across the Tasman. The wind, however, was too cold for us to remain long in our scant clothing in such an exposed position, and, as it was getting late in the day, wo lost no time in starting on the return journey. Wo made good progress down the mountain and along the Hooker Glacier, but it was dusk when we reached the foot of Mount Sefton, and we had to cross the Mueller Glacier in the dark. We however reached the Hermitage all right, and after a good dinner and a bottle of champagne we felt eoual to another tramp of ten miles or so. Wc preferred, however, to talk over what wo had done, and soon afterwards to go to bed and sleep the sleep of the just. And now, in concluding these articles, let me express a hope that my glowing descriptions may tempt no young man who reads them to go and break his neck on a glacier. There are many dangers and difficulties that van only be overcome with knowledge, skill, and patience. The. aufestlooking way is often the most dangerous. It would bo easy to got your skull cracked with a block of falling ice or reek. It would >ic still easier to tumble into a snow-filled crevasse and smother yourself, or to come to grief by starring an avalanche on a steep snow-slope. Therefore, I would say do not' go with inexperienced persons. As to the pleasures and benefits of alpine climbing, I am often asked if the game is worth the cannle. I answer emphatically—yes. But on this point a greater than J has spoken, and he shall bn heard now. Edward Whymper. prince of alpine climbers, the conqueror of the grout Matterhorn, and most entertaining of descriptive writers, thus expresses his opinion; “We who go mountain-scrambling have constantly set before us the super iority of fixed purpose or ptreevorance to brute force. We know that each heigh';, each step, must, ho gained by patient, Isborious toil, end that wishing cannot, taka the place of working ; we know the benefits of mutual aid ; that many a. difficulty must ho encountered and many an obstacle nni'-t bo grappled with or turn* d, but wc know that where there's a will there’s a way ; and we can go buck to our daily occupations better fitted fo light the battle of life, and to overcome the impediments which obstruct nur pat: w, rtrr ngthened end cheered by the recollections of past labors, and by the memories gained in other fields. We glory in the physical regeneration which is the product of our exertions ; we exult over the grandeur of the scenes that are brought before our eyes, the splendors of sunrise and smwef, and the beauties of hill, dale, lake, wood, and waterfall ; but, we value more highly the development of manliness, and the evolution, under combat with difficulties, of those noble qualities of human nature courage, patience, endurance, ar.d fortitude. Toil he must wiio goes a-niountainncriog ; but out of the toil comes strength (not merely muscular energy more limn that, nn awakening of all the faculties), and from the strength arises pleasure!. If I could blot cut every rcminiscer.ee, or erase every memory, still I should pay that my sorambU among tiie Alps have repaid me, for they have given mo two of the bout things a man can possess health and friends. But the recollection of past pleasures cannot be effaced. Even now, as I write, they crowd up before me. First comes an endless scries of pictures, magnificent in form, effect, and color. I sc;; the great peaks, with clouded tops, seeming to mount up for over and ever; I hear the music of the distant herds, the peasant's jddei, and the solemn church bells ; and I scent the fragrant breath of the pines. And after these have passed away another

tram of thought succeeds—of those who have been upright;, brave, and true; of kind hearts and bold deeds : and of courtesies received at stranger hands, trifles in themselves, but expressive of that goodwill towards meu avbirh is the essence of charity. There have been joys too great

have been upright, brave, and true; of kind hearts and bold, deeds : and of courtesies received at stranger hand*, trifles in themselves, but expressive of that goodwill towards mcu xvhiVh is the essence of charity. There have been joys too great to be described in words, and there imve been griefs upon which I have not darnel to dwell; and with even these in mind, I say climb if yen will, hut remember that courage and strength are naught without prudence, and that a mome-nt?ry negligence may destroy the happiness of a. lifetime. Do nothing in haste : look well to each step ; and from the beginning think of what may be the end."