Touching an Iceberg

Posted by Roy Sinclair in Central South Island Travel Stories
Tuesday, 21 March 2006

Icebergs make one think of the Titanic sinking, or of those glistening beacons of nature typically found in polar regions. Floating giants – two thirds are underwater – they are as beautiful as they are treacherous. They are reminders that nature has tremendous powers.

Their fascination was brought home one recent summer when it was reported Antarctic icebergs, three-kilometres wide, had been moving northwards to New Zealand, about 700 km south of Bluff. The icebergs were said to be a potential danger to shipping.

Yet, even closer to home, one can see icebergs floating on the Tasman Glacier melt lake in the Mount Cook National Park. One can touch them and watch pieces of ice, 500 years old, crumble in one’s hands like the pieces of a magic jigsaw puzzle.

And one can watch slabs of ice and rock crash down from the glacier’s awesome, dripping, terminal face and splash into the lake. Soaring above the glacier are the ice peaks of Mount Cook and Mount Tasman.

Icebergs on the Tasman Glacier lake are miniature versions of those seen in polar regions. They are also stunningly impressive, and accessible in one of Glacier Explorers’ small sturdy double-skin MAC Boats.

Guides Kylie Wakelin and Brent Shears, run the Glacier Explorers lake tours to the terminal face of New Zealand's longest glacier. Tours operate for about seven months of the year, or whenever the lake is not frozen over.

They say the melt lake first appeared at the Tasman Glacier’s terminal face about 15 years ago. As is the case with most of the world’s glaciers, it is a result of the Tasman Glacier retreating faster than it is advancing.

The annual advance is about 50 metres while the melt rate is 80 metres. The lake at the foot of  the glacier is presently about 2.5 km square and getting bigger.

Only three of the world’s major glaciers are presently advancing. Two are on New Zealand’s South Island West Coast. The other is in Patagonia.

Tasman Glacier icebergs have their origins in the snow falling at the top of the glacier. Over 400 years will pass as each snowfall, compressed into ice, travels 29 kilometres down the glacier. Reaching the terminal face, the ice will break away to become a new iceberg on the melt lake.     

Ice melt lake tours start at Mount Cook village. A 15 minute mini bus ride is followed by a 20 minute walk over old glacier moraine. I recall my first visit to the Tasman Glacier melt lake when Kylie announced, "Welcome to the moon."

We were suddenly looking down on the milky-grey lake. The lake and its surrounds were exactly how I imagined the moon to be – barren, shattered, and desolate. It was both chillingly frightening and exciting. We were walking on and about to boat cruise in an environment that is too barren, and too cold, to support any life.

Kylie enjoys the young Japanese who have come to New Zealand especially to see wild and beautiful places. Only occasionally do foreign visitors present problems.

"One day a woman, from Bangkok, was obviously very frightened. I tried to find out what the problem was. I suspected she was frightened of snakes or wild bears, so I explained we had none of those in New Zealand.

"She then astounded me when she said she was absolutely terrified of the huge open space. It was the first time in her life she had walked anywhere beyond a big enclosed city!''

Corporate people have been known to bring a bottle of something on a lake tour, and have broken the ice into their glasses. Kylie says she has looked on with curious interest, but she has never been offered a drink!

But, always, it is the environment that creates the most memorable impressions. The absolute silence in one of nature’s huge open spaces is immense.

Kylie says her geography teacher had once led her to believe that natural landscapes changed markedly only over thousands of years.

"I have seen big changes in just a handful of years living within the Mount Cook National Park.," she says. "Not so many years ago we could not have started our venture. There was, simply, no lake at the Tasman Glacier terminal."

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