GLACIER MOVEMENT

Taranaki Daily News, 5 August 1931, Page 5

GLACIER MOVEMENT

CHANGES TAKING PLACE POSSIBLE CLIMATIC EFFECTS. Among guides and others who have had a great many years of - experience of the mountains in the vicinity .of the Mt. Cook Hermitage it is a common belief that in 'some manner inexplicable to them the world is very slowly but nevertheless surely becoming warmer.This assumption is based on the knowledge that during a period of years the main glaciers in the ranges have all registered considerable falls in height and the terminal faces are moving back up the mountains. ■ The forming of many new tributary . glaciers, r too, is .being watched with very considerable interest, says the Christchurch Press, and an interesting ’statement was. made by Mr. Vie#? Williams, now. chief guide at the Mt. Cook Hermitage, who has had. years of guiding experiences in the Southern Alps, and whose climbing feats are second to none in New 1 Zealand. . He stated that from early photographs and paintings and also records left by the pioneers it has been established that the Tasman Glacier has sunk about 80 ■ feet in 45 yeaa-s. The terminal face of the same glacier has moved back up the valley also, and, covering the same number of years, the difference in the did and present length of this 'mighty ice stream’is very considerable. This alteration in the situation of the terminal faces of many of the glaciers has been one of the most noticeable changes in the mountains during the last 10 years, Mr. Williams said. The Mueller glacier is receding even more "rapidly than the Tasman, and, as on the latter, the surface of the glacier, instead of being level with the top of the moraine as it once was, is now nearly 100 feet below it. “There is one very interesting/ fhet about the ■ speed with which glaciers move,” added the guide. “It varies very -considerably from year to year. Some of them move quite rapidly, due to giant ice waves. The thing that I see to account for this change of movement and the waves- which accompany that change are exceptional snow conditions during some winters. If we have several heavy winters in succession—two would be enough in the. ordinary course of events;—the snow seems to pack up, form tremendous cascades of ice, and sufficiently affect the pressure to accelerate lower movement. The giant forces of Nature ..concentrated as in the case of these mighty glaciers have to be seen to be believed.

“There are. a lot of small glaciers smashing a path down the mountains, and new ones are seen forming, during the passage of years. As a comparison of speeds I would say that most of these small ones are coming down, at the same rates as the larger ones are receding at their terminal faces. Heavy collections of, snow at levels of 6000 to 7000 feet seem to be responsible for all the new small glaciers still in the process of complete formatipn. The Stocking glacier, which is. the most obvious-looking from the Hermitage itself, is a splendid example of . the glaciers'still forcing a way out to the moraine flats. •

“It has come down 150 yards in five years, and the heel of the stocking formation which earned the glacier its name has changed considerably,” Mr. Williams concluded.