Mt Cook/Aoraki National Park

I made it to Mt Cook National Park around 9:00 pm. Luckily, I had almost another hour of daylight to find my way around, put up my tent and eat dinner before it would get dark. The mountains were incredible with ominous storm clouds rolling in. The picture above shows the transition from blue sky to the storm clouds over the mountain glaciers.

I enjoyed the pink gravity wave clouds in the opposite direction as I ate my dinner. I had stopped at a grocery store before leaving Christchurch and I finally had an endless supply of fresh fruit and vegetables, cheese, crackers and hummus. After my delicious dinner, I crawled into my tent for the night. It wasn't long before the winds started to pick up. As the winds started to get stronger, I started to think back to all of the other tents at the campsite. As I was walking in, I realized that many people had positioned their tents almost inside of the bushes along the mountains. In about an hour, I realized why. The winds were so strong (Chinook winds) that my tent, metal poles and all, was collapsing in on top of me. At first I was worried about being blown away, then I realized that I weighed enough to prevent that from happening. Next I worried about suffocating, but with a quick push of my hand I realized that was not a problem either. So I rolled over in my sleeping bag and tried to dream up different ways of telling Tom that I had broken our tent.

At about 4:00 am the winds finally ceased and I was able to fall asleep. I woke up about 5:30 am to the sound of rain pounding on the walls of my tent. My initial reaction was to pull up the sleeping bag and go back to sleep. After about 20 minutes of arguing with myself about wimping out on a little rain I pulled myself out of the tent, found my raincoat and packed the wet tent into the car. I found my backpack, some breakfast and a towel to wrap my camera in and headed out on the Hooker Valley trail. (Sorry that the pictures are all washed out - I had forgotten to change my settings from Antarctica and I wasn't downloading my pictures to my computer along the way, so I didn't realize it).

The Hooker Valley trail follows the valley up to the end of the Hooker glacier and usually to an amazing view of Mt Cook. Unfortunately for me, with the rain and cloud cover the views were very limited.

I saw these duck-like birds on the trail. My guess is that there must have been a nest nearby, because they were not happy with me. I could definitely hear the birds squawking, before I could see them.

There were two sets of suspension bridges on the trail. Suspension bridges are very popular for both foot and vehicle bridges in New Zealand. I usually love bridges. I am not sure if it was the persistent downpour, the rushing glacier water or the warning sign, but I was a little hesitant to cross this bridge by myself (I had not seen anyone else on the trail).

Similar to the discussion that I had with myself in the tent, it only took a little convincing and I was across the bridge.

About an hour into the hike, I realized that the rain and clouds were not going to lift. Therefore, I enjoyed the creek and lakes that I was hiking by and eventually turned around. I headed into the visitor's center to dry off and get a cup of coffee. The visitor's center has a great display on the history of mountaineering. The majority of the Mt Cook National Park cannot be accessed without technical mountaineering skills. The Mt Cook National Park is about 175,000 acres, but only has about a handful of walking/hiking trails.

Before heading out for Te Anau, I hiked the Tasman Glacier trail. This is a fun little hike that ends at the base of the Tasman Glacier. The end of the Tasman Glacier can be seen in the photo above. The majority of the glacier base is covered in dirt. At the base, there is a little lake with icebergs floating in the center.

Here is my driving route:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2587002

Lake Tekapo

On my way to the Mount Cook region, I stopped at Lake Tekapo. The Lake is a beautiful turquoise color. The color comes from the mica originating in the glacier runoff that feeds into the lake.

This is the Church of the Good Shepherd

This dam is part of a hydroelectric power station

Cool clouds over the mountains

If you are wondering where on the island everything is located, I have tracked my route on Google Maps. See the following link.

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2571939

Driving in New Zealand

Here is my wonderful little car. I think that it was a Toyota Vista. The interesting part of driving in New Zealand is driving on the left side of the road, riding on the right side of the car and having the manual shifter be the same as we use in the US. It took about a day, but I eventually got used to it.

Extra Pics

Here are some extra pics from Antarctica before I move onto the New Zealand trip.

We do use fall protection (at least when it is not packed away in our WAIS cargo)

Snow drift at WAIS

Views from the C130 flight down to Antarctica


Warming up the ski doo before the obstacle course

The MASH replica of the HF radio (I actually saw one of these in a museum in New Zealand as an example of how people "used" to communicate - I just chuckled to myself)

The Christmas lights antennae for the HF radio

The C17 that flew me back to New Zealand

Back to New Zealand

After a few days of delays I made it back to New Zealand last night. I'm excited to start my trip around the South Island. It is warm, humid and wonderful! I will write more and add more pictures when I get a chance.

Miss you all!
Melis

WAIS Ice Core Drilling

While out at WAIS Shelley and I had the opportunity to tour the ice core drilling operation. The logistics around a project like this are quite impressive. The project is attempting to recover about 3 km of ice. This will allow the scientists to analyze the climate of this region back to about 100,000 years before present. This season the team was able to reach down to about 1.5 km. This was a critical season because the team was drilling through the brittle ice portion of the core. The ice is very fragile in this region. Additionally, the pressure of the air bubbles inside of the ice is higher than the surrounding air pressure. This causes some difficulties, because if the ice cores are not handled correctly the core can explode. Therefore the ice cores are stored in the "freezer" at WAIS for a year in order to for the ice to relax before being transported. The first picture below shows the ice core samples stored for the winter over season. The second pictures shows you the "freezer" that the cores are stored in. It is literally a whole dug in the snow.

Here is the project website if you are interested.

http://www.waisdivide.unh.edu/

Antarctic Phenomenon

Fata Morgana

Fata morgana is a mirage caused by an atmospheric inversion (cold air near the surface with warmer air aloft). The interface between the warmer and colder air acts as a refracting lens producing an upside-down image. In the first picture the black blob in the middle is usually just a small rock that can be seen across the ice. The fata morgana is more difficult to see in the second picture, but you might be able to pick out the fact that the bottom of Mt Discovery is looking a little strange.

John explained to me that the early explorers would see this effect on large pieces of sea ice. Due to the optical illusion, it would look like entire ice cities existed on top of the sea ice.

Diamond Dust

One day Shelley and I were walking over to the galley for lunch and I thought that I was seeing stars. I could see small burst of light in the sky right next to my eye. It was like the sky was twinkling. The phenomenon is called clear sky precipitation, aka Diamond Dust. This usually occurs when an inversion exists (the atmosphere is colder near the surface and warmer aloft). As the warmer air from aloft, which usually carries some moisture, mixes with the colder air near the surface the moisture freezes. This causes tiny ice crystals which sparkle in the sunshine.

The Ice Pier


This is a picture of the fuel tanker docked at the ice pier. To the right of the ship you can see the ice pier. It is a large piece of ice cut out of the sea ice. The piece of ice is moved into position and then covered with dirt in order to keep it from melting. I thought that it was an interesting and creative solution to building a pier large enough for this vessel and the heavy machinery necessary to unload the cargo.

Sabrina and Lettau

On Monday Shelley and I flew out on the Twin Otter to the Sabrina and Lettau sites. The flight out to Sabrina is a beautiful one. We had to stop at the Moody Glacier fuel cache to refuel during the 4.5 hour flight. The cache is in the mountains and there are wonderful views of the mountains and glaciers along the way. This made Monday my favorite day on the ice. I just kept thinking that people would pay thousands of dollars to be on a flight like this.

Here is a picture of the fuel cache. It is literally a pile of 50 gallon barrels of fuel.

The Sabrina site was a new installation and it was satisfying doing the work to get an AWS built out in the field. The new site is named for John and Liz's daughter who will be born in March. Since no one had been to the area before, we had a mountaineer with in case the area contained crevasses. Luckly for us, the area was clear and solid. Each season a Traverse of people, cargo, goods and supplies travels over land from McMurdo to the South Pole. It was amazing, because from the plane we could still see the scar in the ice where they had traveled through the area back in December. Unfortuantely, I do not have any pictures of the site. I will need to get copies from Shelley before I leave McMurdo.

At Lettau, Shelley and I just rebooted the electronics box. For some reason it had clicked off the air. After the reboot, it worked just fine.

Since this was my favorite day, I have splurged and uploaded quite a few pictures below. I hope that you enjoy.