Scientists return for rare reunion

Press, 18 April 1986, Page 18

Scientists return for rare reunion

It is just 9 a.m. and Gavin Craig’s red and blue Bell Jet Ranger of the Helicopter Line has touched down on the beach beside Balance Lake at the terminus of the Ivory Glacier, Westland. The sun has barely begun to brighten the high cliffs and hillsides at one of New Zealand’s most little known yet most beau-

tiful localities in the Southern Alps.

Alighting from the helicopter to the sandy beach, I gaze towards the hut now bathed in bright sunlight Its paint is faded and several years have passed since my last visit I am amazed at how far the glacier has receeded.

Thirteen of us involved in scientific work at Ivory Glacier over nearly 20 years have returned for a once-in-a-lifetime reunion. It is great to be home again, I tell myself. The explorer, Charlie Douglas, was the first to venture up the Waitaha Valley. Of his visit in 1892 he wrote: “The Waitaha is a difficult river to traverse ... I doubt if there is or ever will be anything but its scenery to take people up the Waitaha River." However, while Charlie Douglas battled through the dense rain forest and bypassed unbridged gorges, he never reached the headwaters of the Waitaha which, because of its difficult access, was one of the last West Coast valleys to be explored. We do not know who visited the glacier which, earlier this century, must have had an impressive ice fall over the cirque lip below which is a cliff with waterfall, about 200 metres high. In April, 1953, a climbing party took the first known photograph of the glacier. It is located on the Lange Range at an altitude of between 1400 to 1700 metres, and occupies a south-facing cirque basin. In 1967, after aerial and' ground reconnaisance along both sides of the Divide when between 500 to 1000 glaciers were inspected, the Ivory Glacier (named by the well known climber, scientist, and Antarctican, Trevor Chinn) was selected for study. It was now decided to make a thorough ground examination.