March 3, 2011

As the sun came up, the cold morning gave us some fantastic views of Aoraki/Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest mountain (3 754 meters, 12 316 feet), and its surroundings:

It cannot have been many degrees above freezing and for the first time since we left Oslo we got out everything we had in terms of clothing. We put on long underwear, fleece sweaters, jackets, mittens, scarfs, etc, etc.

Every time I put on many layers of clothing I remember a bizarre conversation I had with my Australian friends Martin and Warwick many years ago. We were talking about differences in climate between Norway and Australia when Martin asked me if we used layered clothing in Norway. I was flabbergasted. I had never imagined that someone would view layers of clothing as a separate concept. In Norway, the only time you do not have several layers of clothing is if you are swimming or in a sauna, when you will have 1 or 0 layers, respectively.

My personal record was set during a fishing trip to Ireland with my french brother-in-law and father-in-law. We were bait-fishing for pike in April and the standing still in the cold demanded special measures. All my clothing layers covered the genital region. Including my underpants my family jewels were covered with no less than 14 layers of clothing.

I checked the weather forecast on my phone. There was no signal in the camper van, but I had noticed a one bar signal close to the washing area. It was enough for my WeatherPro application to connect to the internet and squeeze through the necessary bits of information. The forecast was a miracle. It was basically going to be sunny all day here and rain on the other side of the mountain range. We had definitely chosen the right side of the national park.

Just before we left the clouds started to clear and we got an even better view of “Australasia’s” highest mountain:

The Kiwis love it when something is bigger, faster, higher, better than in Australia. Unfortunately there are a lot of big things in New Guinea, so they cannot say that they have e.g. the biggest lake or the highest mountain in Oceania. They have come up with an elegant solution to the problem and have simply redefined the term “Australasia” (which used to include New Guinea) to only include, you guessed it, Australia and New Zealand. Whenever they beat Australia they can say that they are best in Australasia. Neat.

The camp ground was a good 20 minute drive from Mount Cook village where our Tasman Glacier tour would start. We secured everything, removed our table and transformed the van from a cabin to a means of transportation.

The road going in to the village gives a continuous view of Mount Cook straight ahead. It was difficult to stop taking photos.

After a while we had to stop the car, because the road was already taken. It should be possible to sell this photo to the New Zealand postcard industry:

The meeting point for the tour was at the Hermitage hotel. We were first bussed deep into the national park before we walked to Lake Tasman together with our group of 42 tourists:

We passed an area called the lunar landscape. We could see why:

After half an hour we could see Tasman Lake:

The lake here did not exist in the early 70s, but the melting of the constantly decreasing Tasman Glacier has since created a lake which is now 7 km long. The lake is expected to grow to a size of 16 kilometers in the next 20 years. The formation of the lake has accelerated the melting of the glacier, since the front of the glacier is now constantly in contact with water.

We boarded our boats in groups of 14:

Pieces of pure compact ice were drifting in the lake. This is ice which is several hundred years old and crystal pure.

The lake was full of icebergs and most of them had a beautiful blue color. This is very rare. Normally there are only a few icebergs and they quickly turn white as the sun weakens the outermost layer and air bubbles seep in.

What we were witnessing was in fact remnants of the Christchurch earthquake. When the earthquake hit a week ago the Tasman Glacier had calved a 30 ton piece of ice into the lake, even creating a small 3.5 meter (11.5 feet) high tsunami in the lake.

One of the icebergs looked like a shark:

The glacier is quickly melting. It is currently 27 kilometers (17 miles) long, and is retracting at an exponentially increasing rate. On average it has retracted 180 meters (200 yards) every year since the 1990s, but it is now retracting at speeds beteween 477meters (0.3 miles) and 822 meters (2700 feet) every year.

The melting leaves all the rocks and sand in the glacier on the surface, so that it looks dirty, and so do the tips of the icebergs, of course. In fact we had been warned by the Lonely Planet guide that the glacier looks “downright ugly.”

We could see rocks trapped in the icebergs:

We went real close so we could feel the ice.

The icebergs melt faster at the surface of the lake as the water is heated by the sun. This carves a wedge into the iceberg. Now, as you have probably learnt in school, 9/10ths of a glacier is under water, because ice is roughly 9% lighter than water.

Now, this fact again is quite extraordinary, since almost all other materials are lighter in their liquid state than in their solid state. In fact, water is the only known non-metallic substance that has this characteristic. It is because of the peculiar “Mickey Mouse” shape of the water molecule, and the intermolecular bonds that form between hydrogen and oxygen,  that water forms a crystaline structure when ice is formed, which has so much empty space in its lattice that ice is lighter than water.

Like most liquids, water is heavier per unit of volume the colder it gets. That is, until a certain limit. When water approaches the freezing point, some molecules start to join in crystalline structures on the nanoscale. These take up extra space and make the water lighter. Water is in fact most dense at 3.98 degrees C (39.16 F). As one of very few materials water is at its most dense at a specific temperature in its liquid state.

This has profound effects on the earths climate, and life would most probably not exist if ice had been heavier than water. When a lake is cooled, the heavier, colder water will drop to the bottom, until it is colder than 4C, then colder water will float upwards, This is why the entire lake first is cooled to 4C before a colder layer starts forming at the top. When this layer freezes it forms an ice layer which insulates the lake from the cold, thus keeping it liquid and making it possible for fish (and other life forms) to swim around all winter, instead of becoming frozen fish. (As you have probably guessed by now, I have grown up in Norway) The same effect minimizes ice development around the poles and cools the worlds oceans.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, since the icebergs melt more at the top, where they are directly exposed to the sun, the parts that are under water will gradually rise above the surface to maintain the 1/10th above water equilibrium. The wedge carved by the surface water is shifted upwards, creating this cool effect:

It was fantastic to float around with the icebergs. The kids thoroughly enjoyed it and Iseline was definitely a happy camper today:

After almost an hour on the water we got to see the glacier:

It’s the dirty snow dump, there in the water straight ahead. Yup, Lonely Planet has a point, it’s not very beautiful. It is, of course, very different at the other end of the 27 km (17 miles) long ice mass, where there is an annual snow fall of 50 meters (164 feet). Yes, it sounded crazy when our guide mentioned it, but Wikipedia supports him. Up there 5% of a kilometer of snow comes tumbling down every year. After summer melting only 7 meters of compact snow is left to feed the descending glacier.

We zipped back to the other end of the lake and did the walk in the other direction.

It had been a great adventure to float amongst icebergs on a glacier fed lake.

We had our lunch in the monstrous Hermitage hotel complex which totally dominates the tiny Mount Cook village.

Iseline’s English is steadily improving. After lunch we told her that she could have a chocolate if she went over and bought it herself. She was very reluctant at first and refused. We told her that that was not a problem at all, but there would be no chocolate. We could see the battle going on inside her. The temptation of the chocolate became too strong for her shyness and in the end she moved over to the lunch counter, one inch at a time. The operation turned into a big success and she was extremely happy and proud when she returned with the proof; a chocolate bar and change:

After lunch we visited the hotel’s Edmund Hillary museum, complete with a combined planetarium/cinema.

Edmund, who passed away in 2008, was a national icon and demi-god in New Zealand. He trained here before his Everest expedition where he became one of the two first men to successfully climb Mount Everest. When the New Zealand Reserve Bank asked permission to put him on the NZ 5$ note in 1992 (as the only living non-royal ever), he had insisted that they must put Mount Cook in the background on the note, and not Mount Everest.

His statue outside the hotel looks in the direction of Mount Cook.

I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist putting in yet another photo of Mount Cook. This one is taken next to the statue.

We spent our afternoon in the planetarium/cinema of the hotel. It was a shame not to be out hiking in the fantastic weather. The guide on our tour told us that we were extremely lucky with the weather. They had very few days like this one.

The kids were tired however, and pushing them out on a hike would have been counterproductive. Instead we spent our time watching 2 movies and a planetarium show. We learned a lot about Mount Cook, black holes and the southern sky. I now know how to find the southern cross and how to use it to find celestial south. I already know how to find polaris, so now I can find my way at night anywhere on the globe! Unless it is overcast, of course, in which case I will simply live off the trout I fish until the sky clears.

Like a giant snail we carried our home with us back to the camp ground, had dinner, got the kids to bed and did our now standard evening blogging ritual.

Eirik

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