George Edward Mannering

“ There is the energy, perseverance, and patience to last through a long day's swagging, the pluck to face all sorts of dangers amongst the snow, ice, and rocks, combined with the prudence to know when, for the safety of oneself and the party, to give in and restrain enthusiasm. ”

“ There are pleasures in the pursuit of adventure amongst the great snow-fields and glaciers which only those who are initiated can thoroughly enjoy.
Ask the man who goes climbing what these pleasures are, and he cannot tell you, he cannot define them—yet he feels them, and they are ever luring him on. They are indefinite, inexpressible; but there is a sort of 'mountain fever' which comes when one has once 'lost one's heart to the great mountains.' In the work all a man's best physical, and many of his mental, powers are brought out and strengthened. ”

“ I never to this day can imagine how I came down that fifty feet of rocks without slipping into the crevasse below, but, by the aid of Dixon's directions, I managed to find chinks in the rock-face for the toes of my boots, and reached the ledge to breathe the air of relief once more.
Here we held a council of war. We might, by a traverse of the ice ridge below, gain the rocks again above this bad place ”

“ On this wire rope is slung, on runners, a rude box, travellers entering the same pull themselves across, and almost invariably take the skin off their knuckles with the runners. Crossing by this rope we piled our swags on to Annan's packhorse and walked three miles up the valley to a patch of Wild Irishman scrub, where since our last visit a small galvanised iron hut had been built. A day's delay here with bad weather, and then we shouldered our swags, and on the evening of the 27th reached our well-known Ball Glacier camp. ”

“ It goes against the grain with Dixon and me to turn back beaten from a peak. Indeed De la Bêche and Aorangi are the only ones to which we have lowered the colours of our grand old school—Christ's College Grammar School, of Christchurch, New Zealand—and the latter we have since revenged ourselves upon. The former will not run away, and we are nursing a vindictive feeling against this noble triple-topped summit.
Descending very rapidly, glissading now and then in safe places, we reached the foot and struck over the Tasman Glacier again for our camp on the Malte Brun. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the upper termination of nearly all highly situated ice slopes there almost invariably occurs between the rocks above, or between the ice slope and the permanent clinging ice above, a large gap or crevasse, partially filled or bridged with new snow during the winter months, but more open as the warmth of spring and summer causes the snow to melt and the ice to shrink away. ”

“ Green's interesting book will know, and I could see from my standpoint very plainly that Mr. Green, with Emil Boss and Ulrich Kaufmann—two of the finest mountaineers in the world—could not do otherwise than accept a defeat. ”

“ Johnson, Low, and Annan took the bulk of the swags and started independently for the Ball Glacier, whilst I stayed to follow at a more leisurely pace with Dixon and the photographer. Dixon could only walk for a few minutes at a time and required to rest very frequently, so I sent Cooper on alone, not dreaming for a moment that he could go wrong in such simple ground, where no crevasses to speak of occurred.
It was 5 p.m. ere we arrived at the head-quarters after a gallant struggle on Dixon's part. These are the times which test a man's capabilities, these are the ”