NEW ZEALAND: Glaciers before they’re gone

The Southern Alps are a string of mountain ranges along New Zealand’s south island. We’ve been to Queenstown, what I’d call the Vegas of NZ, where Al and I got a chance to bike at one of the best downhill parks in the world. We stopped in Wanaka for a couple night and did some riding and hiked to the Rob Roy Glacier. Today we’re at a holiday park near Twizel, where our front door opens to the glory of Mt. Cook, which is the tallest peak in NZ. We hiked up close to the base of the mountain yesterday and saw the Hooker Glacier and we’re lucky enough to spot a couple of avalanches on the way back. Today, we hiked along one lateral moraine of the Tasman Glacier before climbing up on it to see the huge sheet of ice covered in rocks and watch and listen as it calved chunks of ice into its lake. The Alps are beautiful and vast and I have to admit they seem to make one feel as if they were in Middle Earth.

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