Aoraki, Glaciers and Icebergs

One of the stops on our trip was Aoraki Mt Cook, New Zealand's highest mountain. It's located in a national park with glacial lakes and gorgeous views. Located in the national park is the Hermitage Hotel and it's accompanying chalets, along with a hostel and a small town for the workers. The town fluctuates with the seasons. It varies between 100-300 people and boasts it's own primary school with five students and two teachers. Talk about a great student-teacher ratio. Not so great though for future dating prospects.

Luckily, I've already found this guy...

As you gathered, the entire area has a strange remoteness. The roadway in winds its way along Lake Pukaki about 55km to the Hermitage Hotel where it seemingly dead ends. From there walks take in you in all directions towards Mt Cook and some of New Zealand's other ice covered peaks.

We stayed just one night at the Hermitage Chalets, taking in an amazing dinner and breakfast buffet. The location is idyllic and well-suited for those who want to escape from everything. Though there are a few bars and lounges around, you could easily go stir-crazy even among the busloads of tourists. We couldn't help but make a few The Shining jokes. A night was long enough for us.

One of the more popular activities in the area is flightseeing, views of the area from above. For our trip though, we stayed a bit closer to the ground and joined the Glacier Explorers tour with myself, Craig, his brother Paul and his dad.

On the drive up to the area, you pass Lake Pukaki with it's strange milky colour. It all seems a bit unusual until you set your eyes on the Tasman Glacier Lake where milky turns to murky and you find yourself floating on a sea of grey silt suspended in the water so cold that your hand goes numb in 10 seconds. That's 2-3 degrees C for those wondering.

You need water that cold, if you're going to float around mammoth icebergs. The Tasman Glacier Lake is full of them as the Tasman Glacier terminates there, casting off ice that's made the 300 year journey from the top. From there, it slowly melts filling the lake and eventually flowing into the streams and lakes below.

Having never been near the glacier before, I had no idea what it might look like or what the icebergs would look like. I had some sort of visage of crystal clear water and pure white ice floating by. Boy did I get that wrong.

I was a bit shocked to learn they are quite dirty and full of rocks and silt. Far less photogenic than I expected. Just 10% of the icebergs float above the surface. The rest bob below making this lake up to 245meters deep in some areas. Pretty spectacular considering this lake was born at the same time I was, back in 1973. Before then, there was only ice and runoff. No pooling. No icebergs.

On an ordinary day now, the lake has many icebergs in it. However, we were blessed with an extraordinary viewing session because the Christchurch earthquake dislodged a large section of the glacier which broke up and floated downstream. We were surrounded by icebergs big and small. The photos aren't great at giving scale, the one in this photo seemed to be about 40ft tall? We saw others that looked like monsters, and few so small you could almost scoop them up.

All of the blue on the bottom of this one is ice that's never been exposed to the sun. Within a few hours, it will turn. This particular iceberg was adjusting itself as pieces melted away and broke off, trying to retain it's 10above/90below proportion. Within twenty minutes, we went from seeing no blue ice at all to seeing this glacier look as if it might do a 180 roll. So we skedaddled off and back to the lodge.

We were going a little stir crazy ourselves, so we took a few minutes to do ridiculous photos before settling in with our Monteiths.

Can you spot Mt Cook in this photo? Mr B artfully hid it just behind those big trees on the left. I guess he decided the largest mountain in New Zealand couldn't measure up to my smile.