I’m never too wide awake and with it when emerging from the campervan in the morning, but the winter wonderland that greeted my eyes this morning was quite a surprise. When I say winter wonderland, it had hailed and snowed lightly in the night so it was like icing sugar everywhere. But seeing as we missed out on a winter (no sympathy required…), I feel the need to wax lyrical. With 6 layers of clothes on and a couple of cups of coffee, I was ready for the day ahead.
The valley glaciers around Mount Cook are unusual as they have huge lakes at the bottom, and as we’ve already walked on glaciers, we took to the water. Coming over the terminal moraine rocks, the huge murky grey lake spread out in front, and was dotted with icebergs huge and small that have broken off the front of the glacier, about 2kms further up the lake. The lifejacket made the layer total 7, and me look like the michelin man. Our little boat poked up to the icebergs, that look like ice islands, and to think that 90% of the iceberg is submerged! The ice itself is a strange patchwork of building blocks as it originates in the glacier where the ice cubes tumble over each other on the way down. Each iceberg is slowly dissolving, tipping up and occasionally turning over, although fortunately the one we had a little walk on stayed very still!
That evening, after a walk up to another iceberg lake at the foot of Mount Cook with views of at least 17 glaciers, we retreated to the Old Mountaineers Cafe and planted ourselves in front of the roaring log fire. Seriously contemplating a warm room in a lodge somewhere, we dragged ourselves back to the chilly campsite with it’s crystal clear night sky and moonlit glaciers. I think it’ll be another cold one tonight.