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Like the song says, maybe I do dream about climbing from morning till night, but you don't always get it good. Like this time I'm going to tell you about.
Duncan and me and Cameron and Gerry have just been ten days up the head of the Matuki, hoping to climb that inhospitable heap Mt. Thundergut not to mention sundry others, but the weather has been nothing if not lousy so we have come out again with nothing up our sleeves except you might say snow chuff. In between spine-bashing in our fleabags and digging a great monstrous snow-cave which we don't manage to live in anyhow because who would with a nice warm dry hut close by, we do a few real pioneering excursions over the Bonar Glacier. The glacier is carved up with God knows how many crevasses only you can't see them in the whiteout, and a muckle great number of them you can't see anyhow because they have a light snow roof over them. In spite of his Doctor of Science degree Duncan is not all that educated with respect to slots and he spends a goodly part of his time falling into them.
So like I said we've given the Matukl away and have come out to Wanaka and are waiting for a bus to take us over the Haast Pass to the West Coast side. By jingo the weather had better be better over there or Hughie will be getting his face smashed in.
With an hour to bus time we gets to looking at the local burg and we sees this new two-storey building going up and up top, leaning over the parapet, is one of those wheel thingos that they use to haul up barrow loads of bricks and mortar.
“What an archaic device,” murmurs Duncan, meaning that they could do a lot better with one of those monstrous great cantilever cranes you see on top of Goldfields House etcetera. “Nevertheless,” says Duncan, and you can see he's thinking up some wonder too powerful to relate as the cogs in his brain revolve, “nevertheless,” says he, “the eye of Science must never overlook any small detail that could prove useful,” and he is persuading Gerry, telling him he is the best gymnast in the party and what about if he goes up the rope and gets it. But Gerry makes like he is not all that keen, and murmurs some paltry excuse i.e. it's not his to take and that would be stealing.
Duncan replies this way, that in the interests of scientific enquiry no man's property is his own…. moral scruples such as Gerry is sadly exhibiting have held back the march of scientific progress a thousand years… take Galillio…. We let Duncan rave on but I am spending my thinking time on other things I can do with more of and don't have much of right now one of them being for example food. So me and Cameron and Gerry wander off and cram ourselves into the village store and cram a goodly assortment of commestables into our stomachs, and when we emerge what do we see but the bus has arrived and Duncan has just finished helping the driver load our packs into the luggage compartment. Looks like they needed a rear-end loader for the last one.
Well, we gets into the bus and eight hours later are flung out at some crazy spot on the west coast wilderness. Up yonder the icy mass of the Fox Glacier comes hurtling down a good 10 thousand feet from the Main Range to sea level, and up it we have to lug our packs and snow-shovels, dammit, to 9,000 ft. where we are going to dig a snow-cave as bivvy base for some mighty high climbing around Cook and Tasman.
Well the bus has left us and we don't get any bonus for hanging around so we shoulders our packs and away. Godawlmighty! mine is weighing nothing if not half a ton and I am wondering did I really pack in so much garbage that I can hardly stand upright but go buckling at the knees like I'm half tight.
We shambles over the grey monotonous moraine type stones for hour after hour and it's beginning to get more than somewhat tedious. I wonder am I sickening for something on account of my pack is beginning to be getting almost too much for me. Then we comes to the white ice and Boy, is she cut up with crevasses!
“Scroggin stop,” says Duncan on the edge of a huge monstrous crevasse that disappears down hundreds of feet into the blue ice. Ah, a rest at last - to Hell with the scroggin - I gotta lie down. Next thing I sees Duncan tearing my pack apart and what does he emerge with? Nothing if not that great wheel thingo from that building in Wanake. I am brung-on no end.
“Now,” says Duncan like as if he is the Professor and we are his group of sniffly-nosed class-birds, “I am about to demonstrate my new easy, scientific method of getting a mug climber out of a crevasse that he has been mug enough to fall into. In this demonstration we tie the climber to one end of the rope which had been passed through the pulley, thus, and to the other end we tie his pack after it has been weighted to make it heavier than the climber.” And what does he do but load into my pack a dirty great heap of morains boulders, with a shovelfull of snow for good measure.
“For this experiment,” says Duncan, “me need the bravest man in the party and I think it will be unanimously agreed” says Duncan - the cunning devil; they all agreed with him - “it will be unanimously agreed that the honour falls to Wozziborn.”
So before I can say anything they have me grabbed and strung up, and there is Duncan explaining that he is going to lower me into the crevasse and he will then proceed to bring me out easily and painlessly and all the rest of the rhubarb that only Duncan can spout forth when he's really steamed up. I can see I'll get exactly nowhere arguing, what with them being three to one. Better get it over quickly, so I poise myself on the brink, shout “Goff, goff and we're off!” and leap into the blue depths.
I am brought to a rib-crushing stop 120 ft. down, just short of a needle-sharp stalagmite of ice that is sticking up. Duncan is shouting abuse from above and it appears he's peeved at me for jumping before he had time to put his gloves on so that he got his hands burnt.
The next step in the big rescue is he shoots my pack in tied to the other end of the rope. It is, of course, heavier than me, and as it comes hurtling down I goes roaring up. The pack frame gives me a hefty welt as it screams past me, and I continue on up to crash my head on the overhung lip of the crevasse and get my whiskers tangled up in the pulley.
Seeing that the loaded pack is heavier than me, the good old No.3 mylon stretches an extra couple of feet which is just enough to make it reach the aforesaid ice stalagmite. This rips up the side of my beaut Mountain Mule and out pours the stones.
The pack, now lighter than met comes rushing up again and deals me a glancing blow on the hip as I pass it on my way down again. When I come to rest I find I am pinned by the seat of my pants to the stalagmite. At this stage I must have lost my nerve because I untie the rope, so the pack comes hurtling down again and whacks me a severe blow on the head.
I am making huge efforts to extricate myself, what time I'm shouting choice excerpts of the Queen's English at Duncan, when it turns out I'm fighting my bunk and getting my crampons all snarled up in the sleeping bag (I must have gone to bed with them on) and Duncan is laying on with a pillow saying “Shut up! Shut up, Rosso! How do you expect anyone in the hut to sleep through that infernal racket!”
Like I said, it's all right to have dreams about climbing, but you don't always get it good.