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THE NEW ZEALAND ALPS
so dangerous on a gentle slope, and one can often waddle or half glissade down in the midst of one with perfect safety, though they make one uncomfortably wet.
cornices
Cornices are a frequent source of danger to the mountaineer. They are formed by the snow drifting over one edge of a ridge and forming a hanging mass. It is needless to say that one soon learns to walk some feet away from the outer edge of a cornice, for after poking one's axe-handle through three feet of snow, and peeping through a blue hole down a precipice of perhaps 1,000 feet or so, it is not difficult to fancy what the result would be should the cornice break.
