It was like being on the back of a groaning beast that was so large you couldn't see its entirety. It shifted, it let out a low moan, it threw things at us; it was unmappable, unknowable because it was ever-changing. We were atop a glacier.
The Tasman Glacier is less visited than the more famous Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers, and less overtly dramatic, but far more interesting. Acessible from Mt. Cook Village, you take a van to a point where you hike a bit and then climb into boats where you tour the glacier from the lake that has formed on top of -- well, sort of in -- the glacier.
Cute Guide (C.G.) Brent (do you think they change their names when they become guides?!) piloted us around this lake, telling us all about glaciers, how they were formed, what they are made of, how they travel. And travel they do, just in the short while we were there, one of the icebergs had already shifted positions. Do you see a shark in this one?
All the while, rocks dropped around us as the ice melted, and a faint, barely discernable groan issued forth. At one point we were invited onto a large chunk of the glacier that was floating in the lake. Amazingly, I didn't have any incidents there.
The views of Mt. Cook were fabulous, perhaps better than from any other vantage point.
A few days later we found ourselves on the other side of the range at the aforementioned Franz Josef Glacier
and the Fox Glacier.
We opted not to partake in any of the helihike or all day glacier walks options, but did enjoy the short hikes to the terminuses (termini?) of each. However, there was one frightening incident when Daffy took a nosedive into a crevasse and we had to dig him out. Can you find him? No?! Hmmph, some rescuer you'd be!
Or maybe the photographer needs to understand lighting better?
| Previous entry | Return to Travelogues Main Page |
Return to Deborahworld Home Page | Next entry |