Making Movies is an Auckland based film company that creates adventure and nature documentaries. I was asked to help with the script editing and presentation on a movie about the mountains of New Zealand. This involved spending time with the film team in the Southern Alps, amongst some of the most spectacular landscapes in New …
Hooker Valley rockfall. – Simon Cox / GNS Science On the evening of Monday 14th July there was a large rockfall from the western slopes of Mount Cook into the Hooker Valley. Staff from the Department of Conservation and GNS Scientist Simon Cox flew over the area to make assessments of the impact. The first photo shows …
The Tasman Glacier is the largest glacier in New Zealand. Its upper section is mostly white as you would expect of a river of ice. However, the lower half is covered with a layer of rock debris about a metre thick. This forms an insulating layer that slows down surface melting and allows the glacier …
Mount Cook rock avalanche 1991. Lloyd Homer, GNS Science On 14th December 1991 a massive rock avalanche occurred from the East Face of Aoraki /Mount Cook, sending an estimated 14 million cubic metres of rock in a 1.5 kilometre wide cascade across the grand plateau and down onto the Tasman Glacier. It is thought that …
For those of you interested in the follow up of our ice core drilling expedition, here is the National Radio broadcast of the story as told on “Our Changing World” on Thursday 20th August. The broadcast is about 13 minutes long. http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ocw/ocw-20090820-2120-Southern_Alps_Ice_Cores_Drilling-048.mp3
Out of our original top 3 favourite glaciers to check for ice cores there was still one left to go. This was the Baker Glacier, visible clearly from our previous site on Mount Hutton, almost directly across on the other side of the Murchison Glacier Valley. Baker Glacier is relatively low altitude at 2360 metres. …
Just for the hell of it, I bivouacked out for the night, with the intention of watching shooting stars. Despite the cold (about -12 deg C) I was reasonably comfortable in my warm sleeping bag. I quickly fell asleep and overslept – waking at 9am. We spent the morning packing up the drill gear and …
After yet another day of sorting out and preparing our gear, the weather forecast looked quite promising for a few days. We decided to fly back up to Mount Hutton and drill non stop until we either came to bedrock of had to stop for other reasons, such as water in the ice. The four …
Today we flew up to our highest planned drill site on Mount Hutton. Yulan stayed behind, and with us instead were Tom McRae and Ron Madden from TV1. Because of the prospect of poor weather forecasted for tomorrow, we had decided to do a rapid reconnaissance drill only. If the results proved to be good …
Dan and I got up early and each went of for a walk around the glacier. I climbed up Mount Annette and then returned through the wind scoop. The plane arrived and by the time it was fully packed there was no room to fit both of us in! I decided I would be happy …