Dawn in Twizel on the edge of Lake Pukaki brought us foggy morning air and the classic maymester breakfast spread. Hopping into the van and soob 2.0, we careened through dismal weather and progressively crushed hopes along the highway, climbing in altitude. Nonetheless, morning clouds lifted onto beautiful vistas of the lakeside and the day was saved!
We stopped mostly to look at a sheep farm that happened to sit above a huge flat gravel area. As a understandably confused sheep farmer brought his dogs past us and closed the gate, we determined we were looking at a glacial outwash plain. Next we took off to an overlook above a menagerie of braided rivers fed by the glacial melt as we got more and more hyped to see the glacier we keep hearing about.
Up the mountain in amazing sun we reached the Hermitage lodge and flanks of Mt cook. After seeing the lodge, a favorite of Sir Edmund Hillary, we hopped on a bus with a cranky driver (made us appreciate our own chauffeurs!) before a short hike opening on to an incredible Lake Tasman.
Hopping on a boat with lifejackets strapped and wind in our hair we took off into the eerily blue lake full of icebergs. Really, we just saw a small top portion of partially melted bergs with the true blue color peeking out from beneath thermal cracklines.
Scooping up floating chunks of dense glacial ice, we got a taste of ice that was deposited as snow before the industrial revolution! And then a taste of the intense scale of glaciers as we had to skirt the hundreds of meters of basal shelf beneath the water, and hope a piece of this basal ice didn't break off and make a frosty tsunami. What blew our minds more is that this glacier was just a remnant of the much larger glacier that existed 26,000 years ago. We could see the giant lateral moraines from the ancient glacier.
Nice and warm back in the Hermitage lodge we visited the Mt Cook Museum. Alongside original mountaineering gear from the turn of the 19th century, Maori ice equipment, and animal taxidermies, we saw an explanation of the "living glacier". Glaciers are really rivers of ice where snow compacts under its own weight and deforms and flows downhill. We saw interactive diagrams of accumulation and ablation, moulins, seracs, sinkholes, and the environment that emerges from glacial erosion.
Pumped up with knowledge!!, we set off from the museum to a hike up alpine trails into the setting sun. We hoofed it up moraine after moraine, across hanging suspension bridges, over milky-blue rivers until we reached Hooker lake. Our Tim Tam snack hit the spot.👌
Sore legs, cheery dispositions and hungry bellies all had a place as we wrote up our new glacier facts and munched some sweet pasta and cauliflower salad courtesy of our lady chefs. We finished with brownies to cap off a great day.
Gus and Robby
We stopped mostly to look at a sheep farm that happened to sit above a huge flat gravel area. As a understandably confused sheep farmer brought his dogs past us and closed the gate, we determined we were looking at a glacial outwash plain. Next we took off to an overlook above a menagerie of braided rivers fed by the glacial melt as we got more and more hyped to see the glacier we keep hearing about.
Up the mountain in amazing sun we reached the Hermitage lodge and flanks of Mt cook. After seeing the lodge, a favorite of Sir Edmund Hillary, we hopped on a bus with a cranky driver (made us appreciate our own chauffeurs!) before a short hike opening on to an incredible Lake Tasman.
Hopping on a boat with lifejackets strapped and wind in our hair we took off into the eerily blue lake full of icebergs. Really, we just saw a small top portion of partially melted bergs with the true blue color peeking out from beneath thermal cracklines.
Scooping up floating chunks of dense glacial ice, we got a taste of ice that was deposited as snow before the industrial revolution! And then a taste of the intense scale of glaciers as we had to skirt the hundreds of meters of basal shelf beneath the water, and hope a piece of this basal ice didn't break off and make a frosty tsunami. What blew our minds more is that this glacier was just a remnant of the much larger glacier that existed 26,000 years ago. We could see the giant lateral moraines from the ancient glacier.
Nice and warm back in the Hermitage lodge we visited the Mt Cook Museum. Alongside original mountaineering gear from the turn of the 19th century, Maori ice equipment, and animal taxidermies, we saw an explanation of the "living glacier". Glaciers are really rivers of ice where snow compacts under its own weight and deforms and flows downhill. We saw interactive diagrams of accumulation and ablation, moulins, seracs, sinkholes, and the environment that emerges from glacial erosion.
Pumped up with knowledge!!, we set off from the museum to a hike up alpine trails into the setting sun. We hoofed it up moraine after moraine, across hanging suspension bridges, over milky-blue rivers until we reached Hooker lake. Our Tim Tam snack hit the spot.👌
Sore legs, cheery dispositions and hungry bellies all had a place as we wrote up our new glacier facts and munched some sweet pasta and cauliflower salad courtesy of our lady chefs. We finished with brownies to cap off a great day.
Gus and Robby
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