pe. Correll put the primus
stove and the inner pot of the cooker in the ready food-bag, McLean
slung on his camera and the aneroid barometer, while I took my ruck-sack
with the rations, as well as field-glasses and an ice-axe. In case of
crevasses, we attached ourselves to an alpine rope in long procession.
According to the "Epic" it was something like this:

We saddled up, adventure-bent;
Locked up the house--I mean the tent-
Took "grub" enough for three young men
With appetite to equal ten.
A day's outing across the vale.
Aurora Peak! What ho! All hail!

We waltzed a'down the silvered slope,
Connected by an Alpine rope;
"Madi" in front with ice-axe armed,
For fear that we should feel alarmed.
Glad was the hour, and--what a lark!
Explorers three? "Save the mark!"

The mystery of the nunatak was about to be solved. Apparently it rose
from the level of the glacier, as our descent showed its eastern flank
more clearly outlined. It was three miles to the bottom of the gully,
and the aneroid barometer registered one thousand one hundred and ninety
feet. The surface was soft and yielding to finnesko crampons, which sank
through in places till the snow gripped the knees.

Ascending on the other side we crossed a small crevasse and the peak
towered above us. The northern side terminated in a perpendicular face
of ice, below which a deep basin had been "scalloped" away; evidently
kept clear by eddies of wind. In it lay broken fragments of the
overhanging cliff. The rock was a wide, outcropping band curving steeply
to the summit on the eastern aspect.

After a stiff climb we hurried eagerly to the rock as if it were a mine
of inexhaustible treasure. The boulders were all weathered a bright red
and were much pitted where ferruginous minerals were leached out. The
rock was a highly quartzose gneiss, with black bands of schist running
through it. Moss and lichens were plentiful, and McLean collected
specimens.

The rocky strip was eighty feet wide and three hundred feet high, so,
making a cache of the primus, provisions and burberrys, we followed it
up till it became so steep that it was necessary to change to the snow.
This was in the form of hard neve with patches of ice. I went first,
cutting steps with the ice-axe, and the others followed on the rope. The
last ten of more than one hundred steps were in an almost vertical face,
which gave a somewhat precarious foothold.