Glistening Glaciers

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We are woken by the sun. Huh? That's weird!! But yes it's true. Brilliant sunshine coming over the mountains to our east. Not only that but the skies are almost clear of clouds. It is very gusty but it's such a huge contrast to yesterday when we arrived.

Breakfast is included in our room rate as is a free shuttle to the main building which we take to save us some time. It'd be a 15 min uphill walk otherwise! It's a typical buffet breakfast, not much to write home about! So I won't. :-)

We're booked in to do a tour at 2pm with Glacier Explorers. That means we have a couple of hours to fill in. We head off to the Hooker Valley Road and walk the "Kea Point" track; it's about 30 mins each way. It's very windy and at one part quite difficult going uphill - and they say that anyone of any age and fitness would be able to do it. Yeah, right! I mean it's not that bad for us but there were a few older people finding it a bit hard going.

Anyway, we get to the viewpoint which overlooks Mueller Lake, glacier and morraine wall (the left rubble left over from the advancing or retreating of the glacier). There are other glaciers around too and we have a great view of Mount Cook and other mountains as the cloud comes and goes. As we take pictures we hear a loud but distant rumble...yep, an avalanche...Susan even manages to see it...I'm too slow. It is a beautiful spot to soak in the spectacular views.

We don't have enough time to do the other walk and besides we'll be seeing the same things from a different angle. Back at our room and we have some sandwiches sitting on the deck outside in the sunshine.

Quite a lot of people going on the tour. A minibus takes us out and along the Tasman Valley and then we have a 40 minute walk to the lake (which should only take 25 mins but we are slowed by some older people in the front). We're given lifejackets and hop into fibreglass hulled boats with inflatable sides.

Our guide takes us around the lake, in and around the numerous icebergs and then parks us right next to one! Wow!! Then we get to handle a large chunk of ice and taste it. It's quite amazing how dense the ice crystals are and the amount of grit and rocks in them. This ice is 500 years old. Due to the buoyancy aspects of sea water, icebergs found there show 1/3rd above water where as these fresh water bergs show just 10% above water. The other distinguising feature is the amount of stone and rock in these bergs to the point that they look dirty and like, well, a pile of rocks. However there are brighter more whiter bergs and these are the newer ones to have broken off or apart from other larger bergs.

We cruise around for about 1.5 hours yet it seems to be over so quickly. It was really incredible being out on this huge lake with these massive gacial icebergs surrounded by mountains. One feels so insignificant. It's also hard to not think about how the environment changes every year, every month, every day. No 2 days are the same here. Things we've seen today will be different to what people see tomorrow.

We're back to our room for dinner. It's our last night with cooking facilities so we use up what we've got. We have another visit from the resident ducks and a Kea - a native NZ bird much like a parrot - visits too. It's a very big bird, about the size of a overweight galah with a huge damaging beak. It's dark so I don't get a very good photo of it.

The clouds have increased during early evening along with the wind. It will be interesting to see what the weather has in store for us tomorrow as we head back to Christchurch.

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Photos

Mueller Lake & Glacier
This photo shows Mueller Lake and Glacier in the foreground, the morraine of the glacier behind it and Mount Cook in the background.

Mueller Glacier - up high!
Views of the upper section of Mueller Glacier as well as a couple of other glaciers.

Glacier, Lake and Mountains
Tasman Glacier in the foreground, the morraine wall behind and Mount Cook's East Face in the background.

Tasman's Toe
The glacier up close with another tour boat at the foot. Despite the top layer being rocks, the rest is ice.

Shiny new iceberg!
This is a "new" iceberg. Well a couple of years ago it broke off the toe of the glacier. And it's had a number of splits, including one just the day before our visit as you can see in the front of the berg.

A Kea!
Not a great photo but contrary to people's warnings we saw just 3 of these birds and at no time did they appear dangerous - just curious!