CROSSING THE ALPS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6123, 9 March 1898, Page 2

CROSSING THE ALPS.

MOUNTAINEERING EXPERIENCES. FFbom a Cobbespondent.] OKARITO, March 8. Mr J. G. M'Kay and Mr J. Adamson, guide, arrived at the Miners' Cabin on the Waiho River on March 6, They crossed the western wall of Canterbury by the Great Tasman, Rudolf, Franz Joseph, Spa, Spencer, Burton, and Zinquoridy Glaciers, to the source of the Kellery. They found a new pass from the Neve Basin of the Franz Joseph across Drummond's Peak to the Spa Glacier on the Kellery watershed. This river is more accessible at the source from the Canterbury side of the Alps. They staged four forty pound swags across the passes, lowering them down a couloir with 200 feet of rope a distance of 2000 feet, anchoring them with ice-axes on the precipitous slope. One swag broke the ties and was hurtled down the mountain beyond their sight. A snowstorm of three days' duration detained the mountaineers on the Kellery range. The Bnow was fifteen inches in depth around their tent, and they cleared it with plates. For five days they were compelled to melt snow to make cocoa. Then the methylated spirit being exhausted, and all the things covered with snow, they found it "impossible to make a warm drink. When the weather cleared they carried the camp down an overland shoot to the bush line. They traversed all the glaciers drained by the Kellery, and descended the Burster range to civilisation, having had nothing to eat for thirty-six hours previously. -