AN ICEBERG-BEARING LAKE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22197, 26 February 1934, Page 10

AN ICEBERG-BEARING LAKE

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In your Saturday’s issue there appeared an interesting account of an icebergbearing lake in South Westland, by Captain Yerex. In the hopes that further information on this rare phenomenon for New Zealand may be of interest I give the following summary:—The lake, or pond, lies at a height of 3200 feet at the head of the Otoko River, a large branch of 'the Paringa, and is, therefore, distant only 18 miles from the South Westland road and Condon’s house at Poringa Ford, while the nearest settlement of size would be Bruce Bay rather than Okuru. It is formed by the terminal face of a glacier damming up the creek in the valley: this glacier, named the Roberts, after the most renowned of'Westland’s surveyors and the assessor of the heights of most of our Divide Peaks, descends not from • Mount Hooker bub from Mount Dechen, some miles northwards on the Hooker Range. It was discovered, officially at any rate, by a party led by the late T. N. Brodrick, then a Canterbury district surveyor on the occasion of a pioneer crossing and return from Lake Ohau to Paringa, via Brodrick’s and Otoko Passes. His report, in which he mentions this lake only as one object of beauty and interest in a journey full of mahy such, can be consulted in the appendixes to the report of the Department of Lands and Survey for 1896-7. He was probably responsible for the mapping of the Otoko region, though he states that the excellent map accompanying the report was compiled largely from the surveys of Mueller and Roberts, of Westland. It is unfortunate that the presebt tendency is to treat, as if it had never been done, the fine work of these early surveyors. The lake has probably seen far less visitors since then than one, also at times bearing small icebergs, on the summit, of Browning Pass, Canterbury. However, last August the valley, lake, and 'pass were visited and photographed by two members of the Canterbury Mountaineering club- —Edgar R. Williams and C. Wood—so that it is altogether not quite so “ unknown ” as the deer-killers would suggest.—l am, etc.. B. Wyn Irwin.