Читать книгу With Axe and Rope in the New Zealand Alps онлайн

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There is something exhilarating in this setting foot on the clear ice after days of clambering over cruel rocks, something that seems to thrill one as the nails go ‘crunch, crunch’ and give such grand foothold, a cheerful ring in the clink of the ice-axes, a peculiar charm in the tinkle of the little surface streams, a sense of peace and loveliness in all around, an inspiration of awe and grandeur in the glorious masses of mountains which rear their hoary heads for thousands of feet above, whilst over all there seems to hang an invisible and imperious over-ruling and omnipotent Power directing the marvellous workings of Nature. Here man may feel his littleness and his unworthiness, and yet with Byron he feels what is so beautifully expressed in ‘Childe Harold’—

I live not in myself, but I become

Portion of that around me; and to me

High mountains are a feeling.

The Hochstetter Glacier is one of the most impressive and beautiful sights in the Southern Alps. Its supplies come even from the very summits of Aorangi and Mount Tasman, the two noblest mountains in Australasia. Avalanches from the eastern and northern slopes of Aorangi descend to a large ice plateau situate at an altitude of 8,000 feet. From between the great north-eastern spur of Aorangi and the southern slopes of Mount Tasman the Linda Glacier issues also into this plateau; it was discovered and named by Mr. Green. From the eastern slopes of Mount Tasman and the southern flanks of Mount Haast avalanches also descend to the plateau, which must be some ten or twelve square miles in area. This plateau has but one outlet—the fall of the Hochstetter Glacier. Viewed from below, the frozen cascade tumbles in the wildest confusion over a precipice of 4,000 feet to join the Tasman Glacier at an altitude of 4,000 feet (roughly speaking), and presents a most wonderful appearance. The fall at the top is probably about a mile and a half in width, narrowing to one mile at its foot, and the ice is broken up into séracs, cubes, pinnacles, and towers of all shapes and sizes, intersected by crevasses of the divinest bluish-green colour, and each pinnacle crested with a white cap of unconsolidated snow. One enormous rock protrudes through the ice in its southern and lower portion, crowned with toppling séracs 200 or 300 feet in height, which at regular intervals fall over the face of the rock and descend in magnificent avalanches. First comes a report like a pistol shot, then follows an almighty crash accompanied by clouds of snow and ice dust, succeeded by a low rumbling thunder as the blocks expend their impetus on the gentler slope below, and finally settle down again into solid ice, to continue their journey of centuries towards the terminal face of the glacier nine miles down the valley. Above the fall stand out, in bold relief against the clear sky, the giant forms of Aorangi and Tasman.