Mountain enthusiasts alarmed at glacier disappearance
Sunday, 24 April 2022
Experienced mountaineers and trampers are mourning the loss of some of New Zealand’s glaciers and an irrevocably changed landscape.
Recent surveys by Niwa prompted a warning that 40% of monitored glaciers will be gone in a decade.
Explorer, mountaineer and outdoor educator Philip Temple, who first climbed Tasman Glacier in the Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park in 1960, said he was saddened by its severe recession.
Where once was a huge, slow-moving body of ice, now sits a massive lake.
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Temple said when he made his first climb visit to Aoraki/Mt Cook in 1960, very little lake melt had appeared at the snout of the Tasman Glacier.
At 23 kilometres, the glacier is the longest in New Zealand. When Temple climbed it in 1960 as a 20-year-old it was 50km long and joined up with the Hochstetter Glacier.
“It was so spectacular,” he said. “You had to climb up the moraine walls to get onto the ice with ropes.”
Temple has researched glaciers and has written interpretive panels for Aoraki/Mt Cook’s visitor centre as well as edited the New Zealand Alpine Journal.
He studied watercolours painted by early explorers like Julius Von Haast who climbed the Southern Alps in the late 1800s.
“Those early accounts are just amazing to see. The ice was higher than the lateral moraines. At that time Franz Josef Glacier came down through the forest as far as the highway is now. That’s been distressing to see disappear.”
Some of his trips around Aoraki/Mt Cook would be impossible now as the retreating glacier left unstable rock and rubble behind – and the spectacular views of ice changed forever, he said.
Niwa principal scientist Dr Andrew Lorrey said many of New Zealand’s glaciers would be gone in a decade.
“This will have far-reaching impacts, such as altering our beautiful landscape, affecting the livelihoods of people who rely on these natural wonders for tourism, and flow on effects from decreased meltwater during periods of drought.”
Aoraki/Mt Cook tourism operator Charlie Hobbs said some of the area’s glaciers had reached “last chance tourism”, and anyone wanting to experience them should act now.
Journalist Hazel Phillips recently completed the Three Passes Route in Arthur's Pass National Park.
She was surprised to see how little remained of the Whitehorn Glacier.
“I was anticipating a sustained snowfield up the Whitehorn, only to discover there isn’t much left,” she said.
“There are small sections of perennial snow, one broken snowbridge and plenty of meltwater flowing down.
“Others I met on the trip actually walked underneath the glacier as the caves are so big now. Soon the Whitehorn Glacier will just be a distant memory, with only rubble and moraine left behind.”
Federated Mountain Clubs president Jan Finlayson said back country recreation was changing as a result of glacial melt. She had seen huge differences in glaciers she had visited over the years.
“It’s breathtaking. You have a visceral response. It’s awe and sadness and a sense of being very small in something unfathomably big.”
Alpine tramping, ice skating, skiing and some river recreation were also changing, she said.
“There are so many rivers and streams that depend on that slow and steady release of water and there are ecosystems which also depend on that feed through. Some glaciers are gradually declining while others have extreme rates of decline.”
Tramping was also becoming more dangerous as a result, she said.
“Glaciers leave behind a crumbling, unstable moraine wall with a lot of loose shingle and boulders that can give way at a moment’s notice.”