Our next stop was at the Aoraki National Park. It was cloudy again but we did the longest hike of Tyler's hiking career and we wouldn't have made it if it had been sunny and hot. Tyler and Mommy don't do well in those conditions :-) While we were packing our lunch at the car we heard brief thunder. Weird because it was cloudy but in no way a thunder storm type day. A little later there was a more significant sound, and we realized it was an avalanche in the canyon we could hear. We all looked at each other shocked! It was such a cool sound, and incredible to know it was from massive snow and rockfall from off the peak! The third one we heard was the longest and it lasted for about 40-60 seconds! Unfortunately from where we were we couldn't see into the canyon so we missed seeing it, but the rest of the hike anytime we thought we heard the rumbling sound, we stopped to investigate for as far as we could see! We did get to see one small one, and so funny, it kept rolling down the mountain long after the sound stopped. It was only for the initial few seconds of movement when the largest mass was moving, when it stopped so did the rumble, even though ice and rocks kept sliding down for minutes after. The snow also had that amazing blue color that glaciers have! I couldn't really get a good shot but in a couple you can just barely make it out. It was really incredible! There is also the Tasman Glacier at the end of the hike. It was covered in black rock, even the face, so it didn't look that amazing but you can see in my photo some of the chunks that have eroded off floating thru the lake. This shot was taken by someone else and we didn't get to see anything this dramatic, but you can see the blue ice, which is really just incredible!
Lake Pukaki and Tekapo
Lake Pukaki has this incredible tropical blue, turquoise color because of the kind of silt/minerals that is in the water. We were thinking we might swim, but it was too cold.
Lake Tekapo is cool because on its coast is the Mt John observatory, and this portion of New Zealand is protected from light pollution and is set aside as the world's first Star Reserve.
Because of clouds rolling in and then rain we were unable to stay for the stars, but got some cool pics of the old church on the lake called the Church of the Good Shepard.
1 comment:
Very cool stuff! How awesome that you are able to experience these things!
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