Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Tasman Glacier & Mt Cook

Mount Herbert (from Hooker Valley - Mt Cook base)
IMG_2372

Today the weather was drizzly (or at least it was in the morning) so I just hung around and got talking to some people. I ended up meeting a great English couple (Emma & Steve) who had been traveling for about 5 months (IIRC). Anyway we were talking about what we could do and apparently the weather for the afternoon was going to ease up. We decided to take a walk to the Tasman Glacier which was about a 4 hour round-trip.

After taking a fairly leisurely walk we got to the top where we saw the glacier in all its splendour. The glacier was covered in gravel (moraine?) but we could see the face where ice chunks had fallen off. The lake into which the glacier was thawing had mini icebergs floating in it. Really neat to see first hand. Of course Steve and I had to play skimming with pebbles. It gave us something to do to warm ourselves up!!

Tasman Glacier
IMG_2364

Later in the evening the clouds had lifted and Steve & Emma introduced me to Milo (a horlicks / chocolate drink which is very popular in NZ & Australia). It was very welcome after a walk and a cooling evening. We also got lucky and managed to see Mt Herbert since the clouds had lifted. It was a bit spooky because you could read a book by the moonlight. I guess that's due to all the snow and mountains reflecting the moonlight.

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Map Control

If you press the centre button of the Google map control navigator it should take you to my latest position (or at least the last log I entered!)

Travel Map

//map options : G_HYBRID_TYPE, G_MAP_TYPE, G_SATELLITE_TYPE, or G_PHYSICAL_TYPE is also valid for initial view only YELLOW D YELLOW C YELLOW B PURPLE A GREEN START