Still raining hard in the morning, but I'd agreed with Paula that we'd go up to the glacier whatever the weather and so I picked her up at 10am and we set up the trail that leads to the start of the glacier. Fortunately, the weather eased somewhat and it turned out to be a pleasant and interesting walk for a couple of hours.
After the first trail, we took a second trail to the top of Sentinel Point, which was once covered by the glacier. This was a fairly steep and continuous walk for about twenty minutes, ending with a view of the glacier, but was nothing special.
The glacier has retreated several miles over the last hundred years, but has actually advanced over the last five years. This is caused simply be extremely heavy snow falls in recent years, adding much more weight to the top of the glacier, thereby forcing it further down the valley. It is no counter argument to global warming.
When you reach the base of the glacier, there is a rope fence and a notice warning you of the danger of going any further without an experienced guide. It is all in a National Park and everyone is free to go there, but we thought it wiser to follow the advice and so we went no further. You really need crampons on the ice and these are provided to people who take the guided tours. These are quite expensive and, given the state of the weather, I didn't really feel it was worthwhile to pay all that money to be in the pouring rain for seven hours or so. With hindsight, I'm not sure that I took the right decision, but I had a pleasant day anyway.
After lunch in the pub, it started to rain really heavily again and so we thought we'd try the walk in the rainfores,t by Okarito beach. This was recommended as a place to go if it was raining on the glacier. We got there after about a twenty minute drive, but decided that we just couldn't face walking in the pouring rain for another three hours and so we went back to our respective lodgings for showers and a kip.
The rainforests round here are pretty impressive, with many types of flora, reaching high into the sky. There are all sorts of strange plants, like the tree ferns and the fern-like plant that is used as the symbol on the All Blacks shirts (I must find out what it's called).
According to Jerry, many of the trees are berry-bearing, which accounts for the preponderance of finches and other like birds. This morning he put bread on the veranda whilst we had breakfast and we had a great variety of visitors, although nothing larger than a blackbird. He told me how last year his neighbour, a farmer, had been spraying an agent orange-type defoliant on his own land, but that some blew onto Jerry's plot and almost immediately killed all the new growth. It also left Jerry with some ill effects, such as itching, sore-throat and eyes and disrupted sleep patterns. He tried to get the council to take action against the farmer, but they weren't really interested, partly, he says, because of the cost, but also because most of the council are farmers and they don't want to have any interference with what they do.
There's not much more to say about this day, except that I went back to bed fairly early, ready for a 9am start for the long drive to Nelson.
No comments:
Post a Comment