Big ice release into Tasman Glacier lake
MT COOK: Massive icebergs have filled up at least a quarter of the meltwater lake at the foot of New Zealand’s largest glacier, the Tasman.
The lake started to form in the late 1970s as the glacier rapidly retreated — fuelled largely by a warming climate — and it is now about 6km long.
Glacier watchers estimate the latest release of ice from the Tasman Glacier, the ice river that flows past Aoraki/ Mt Cook, extends at least 1.5km.
More than threequarters of all the ice volume that existed in the Southern Alps at the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid1800s had gone by 2016, glacier specialists calculate.
But as well as saddening many mountain lovers, the Tasman lake and its icebergs thrill tourists who go out on the water in boats or look on from above the glacier’s steep, rocky walls.
Southern Alps Guiding guide Anthony Harris said there had been a tidal surge of up to 2m.
Mr Harris said it was the most significant event he had seen in the past five years on the Tasman.
He said in a Facebook post the present southeasterly wind was holding the icebergs in the northern section of the lake and would do so for at least another day or two.
However, once there was a nor’wester, he expected the lake would be filled with bergs of all sizes.