Skiing icefall on the Tasman Glacier, with Aoraki peering down at us – one of those days I’ll never forget.
Something a little bit different
This isn’t one of my usual blog posts about tramping. This is about one of the most amazing experiences of my life – one that I was very lucky to be able to do, and very lucky to be able to share with my family; my parents and my sister (sorry Matt, that’s what you get for being a boarder). There was a bit of tramping (only a little, because ski boots are not designed for comfort), a dash of flying, lots of skiing and even more gazing around with my jaw literally slack.
Why the Tasman?
Well, firstly that isn’t really a valid question – I mean if you had the chance, why on Earth would you not?
Secondly, Mum and Dad had turned the big 6 0 and felt the need to celebrate with my sister and I. In true Milne family style, Mum had organised an outdoor adventure, one that she’d previously done the hard way (i.e. flying part of the way and then skinning up the glacier, not leisurely flying to the top in a helicopter) back in her 20s while teaching in Central Otago, and wanted to share with us.
Thirdly, the world’s glaciers are shrinking – data from NIWA and NASA’s Earth Observatory show you exactly how much in this cool but depressing graphic comparing satellite imagery taken in 1990 and 2017. According to research by Massey University, the glacier is melting at a rate of about 180m/590ft a year(!!) Before 1970, there was no terminal lake, and look at how big it is currently. The time is now.
The trip
Mum had booked the trip well in advance of September, with the hope that we’d strike it lucky with the weather. When we woke up that morning in Twizel (about 45 minutes’ drive to the Mt Cook airport), the air was crisp, but it looked like the weather gods were shining down on us and it was going to be a bluebird day! We piled into the truck, and set off with the sun rising over the mountains and lighting the McKenzie plains. On the way Mum got the confirmation call that the trip was indeed going ahead – we were a go!
We wound our way along Lake Pukaki, my stomach churning a little as nerves started to mix with excitement. Although I’ve been skiing since almost before I could walk (that’s what happens when you have parents who first met working on a ski field), I’m not as good a skier as I should be. Mum, who had skied the glacier 3 or 4 times before, had reassured me however that I’d be absolutely fine; that the Tasman is an easy blue run with quite a lot of flat running towards the end (which is why the company we were going with, Ski the Tasman, doesn’t accept boarders). But I was still a bit nervous – this would be my first proper off-piste skiing that wasn’t on a public NZ field (which to be honest, don’t really count – although that didn’t stop one of the ligaments in my knee from pulling off a piece of my femur one of the last times I was skiing off-piste at Cardrona).
With my nerves and excitement for company, the trip went quickly and we were soon turning off to the airport / one small building and a runway. Mum, Dad & Heather had brought their own ski gear, but I had to rent boots and skis. The team at Ski the Tasman kitted me out with not only skis, boots and poles, but also everyone with a harness each (for easy rescue in case we fell down a crevasse) and an avalanche transceiver. We were then given some training on how to use the transceivers and tested by trying to find one that had been hidden in the carpark/field (spoiler: we didn’t have to use them on the trip and I’m very glad we didn’t, since I was hopeless and kept walking in the wrong direction).
Then it was time to board our transport! I’d been really excited about going up in a ski plane, but unfortunately the plane pilot was sick, so we were taken up in the Squirrel helicopter instead (and if you were having to choose a second best transport option for anything, then ‘helicopter’ would be pretty high on the list). We watched the first group fly off, and then it was our turn, after being given a quick helicopter safety briefing. The flight alone was beautiful; up over the river plains before flying over Tasman’s terminal lake with the beautiful turquoise of the rock flour carved out from the glacier, and then over the glacier itself (and our ski run). My nerves started dissipating as I just got more and more excited. The views were so mind-blowingly beautiful that I didn’t have room for anything other than amazement and awe.
The Tasman Glacier is 23km long and the longest of the many glaciers we’re lucky to have in Aotearoa. It is also the longest official ski run in the Southern Hemisphere (not counting Antarctica) of about 8 – 10km, so the flight was long enough to enjoy the view. The plan was to ski one run down the length of the glacier as far as was feasible to go, stop for lunch while we waited on the helicopter to come and pick us up for round 2 – and then ski another run on a different side of the glacier.
We landed for our first run on the upper western part of the glacier (I’ve popped in some Google Maps screenshots lower down if you’re super interested in the routes we took). We waited on our guide’s signal, then hopped out of the helicopter and promptly had a crash course on how to stop all of our gear from flying away while the helicopter takes off (unlike in the above photo (which was taken at our lunch spot lower down the glacier) we pretty much laid across all of the gear to protect it (and ourselves) from the helicopter’s downdraft of flying ice and snow as it took off).
The helicopter faded from view and eventually from earshot, leaving us alone on top of a glacier in the middle of the Southern Alps. For a few moments there was only the sound of crunching snow under our boots as we all took a second to experience the view. My head felt like it was on a swivel, trying to take in the jagged peaks all around us. If felt like we were the only humans around for kilometres. I couldn’t stop grinning.
Soon though it was time to be off, so we clicked our boots into our skis, wrapped the straps of our ski poles around our wrists (sage advice from Dad) and off we went. The snow was unlike anything I’d skied in before (keeping in mind I’ve never skied outside of New Zealand so my experience with real powder is … limited). The snow felt softer than I was used to, and I had to learn to adjust my skiing to be smoother, so that I didn’t slide all over the place. But after the first few turns, it was amazing. We were making the first tracks in this amazing snow, I can’t really describe how amazing it was. But it was definitely a lot of fun.
Our guide was a Japanese heliskier and mountaineer called Tai, originally from Japan. He was amazing; super knowledgeable about the glacier and the terrain which helped make me feel safe – he would stop before certain sections and advise us to only ski to the left or right of his tracks to avoid hidden crevasses, or to not stop in certain parts because of avalanche risk, etc.
He was also really relaxed, letting us go at our own pace and making sure we were all having an amazing time (it would have been hard not to!). We had regular rests, which at the start I didn’t really appreciate the necessity of, because I was all hyped up on excitement and adrenaline, but towards the end I was very thankful that Tai paced us so well – they are very, very long ski runs!
The gigantic scale of the glacier and the mountains was very hard to fully comprehend, and it was easy to be tricked into thinking that we weren’t going very far, or very fast. It wasn’t until I let the group get a little ways ahead and they quickly became tiny specs moving sluggishly across the blanket of snow that I realised how big everything actually was. Or when I thought I was skiing at a normal speed (because the terrain either side of me didn’t appear to be moving), and almost ripped the ski pole out of my hand when I pushed it down into the snow because I was actually moving very, very quickly (it was saved only because the strap was looped around my wrist, thanks Dad). When we eventually got down to the flatter part of the run, I couldn’t see why Tai was aiming for a certain area – until I spotted the tiniest of tiny dots; the helicopter that would take us back up for our second run.
One of the rests during the first run was in some of the ice fall; where the glacier goes over a cliff beneath the ice (and the Tasman is about 600m deep in parts), which creates rips or crevasses on the surface. This was a regular stop for the guides and Tai wanted to show us something, so we popped our boots out of our skis, and followed Tai up into the ice.
And came across a natural ice cave that had been hewn out of the ice by the movement of the glacier, and the wind, snow and rain screaming across its surface in storms.
We made it down to the helicopter on the flatter middle section of the glacier, packed our stuff in and flew for a second time over the ice, up to Tasman Saddle – the starting point for our second run of the day. It was such a calm, warm day that even at 2,500m on a saddle between two ranges, there wasn’t a breath of wind. I spent most of the day in only two layers, and no hat or gloves. The dawn’s promise of a bluebird day had more than held true!
Because we were in a helicopter and not the ski plane, we could land right on the saddle, and peer down the steep cliff to the top of the Murchison Glacier, and even through the peaks and over onto the West Coast. There are two huts near the top of the Tasman Glacier that are regularly used for climbing and skiing. Mum had stayed in both when she was younger; Tasman Saddle Hut (ironically not very near the saddle) and Kelman Hut (just above the saddle). Both huts are perched precariously on the edges of cliffs, you wouldn’t want to be having one too many and stumble out to the long-drop; because it would be a very long drop (morbid pun anyone?).
– Disclaimer: the following story has a happy ending, wait for the end –
One of the many stories Mum told my sister and I of her adventures (and one that I almost couldn’t believe) was about a trip she’d been on with one of our family friends, Wayne, and her first husband, Bruce. Their group had been planning on skiing down from Tasman Saddle Hut and off the glacier after a weekend of skiing and climbing. This involved traversing a funnel-shaped curve on the cliff edge further along from the hut. During the traverse, Wayne unfortunately skied onto some uncovered ice, and started sliding down the funnel toward the cliff edge. Mum and the rest of the group watched horrified as he kept sliding uncontrolled and quickly went off the edge of the 130m cliff and fell out of sight.
After radioing Search & Rescue, Mum and Bruce quickly gathered up some gear they thought they might need to reach Wayne (ropes, etc), before skiing around the cliff and then hiking back up to its base (which took about 20 or so minutes, all while Mum was wondering how she was going to tell Wayne’s wife, Liz). However when LANDSAR eventually reached the group at the base of the cliff and asked where the body was, because surely no-one could have survived a fall down a 130m cliff – Mum and Bruce mutely pointed to the man standing between them. Wayne had not only survived the fall, but skied off with only a sore knee, and a cut to his forehead from the edge of his ski. The snow that should have been sitting at the top of the funnel had slipped off (leaving only ice behind, which was why Wayne had fallen) and landed at the bottom of the cliff; creating a very, very convenient soft landing. The search and rescue team couldn’t believe it.
Liz and Wayne, who are still family friends, have since taken Matt and I on many rogaines (a kind of orienteering event) while we lived in Christchurch, and I still can’t really believe that he fell down such a huge cliff either. It was amazing to finally see the location of many of Mum’s stories, and also see the cliff in person – it is in fact very, very high.
I think Mum also loved being able to share the glacier with us and point out areas of interest from her previous trips. She was saddest however not by how much the glacier had retreated (there was a small lake when she was skiing on it back in the 70s, but the glacier reached all the way down to the Blue Lakes), but by how much it had shrunk down vertically – she found that the peaks were a lot further away and bits that had been previously below the ice and were now well above the glacier. She also pointed out a lot of erosion on the sides of the mountains, because the glacier was no longer supporting them, and protecting them from the ravages of the elements. So I think it was a little bittersweet, she had known that the glacier had retreated but I don’t think she’d expected the upper parts to have also been affected as much as they have been.
Down the glacier from Wayne’s cliff, after skiing through an avalanche prone zone, we stopped for another explore of the ice, before heading down and skiing through some of the ice fall (the first photo on the blog) – which was such a cool experience on top of an already fantastic day.
Then it was time to ski across the flatter section back to meet the helicopter, and fly back across the lower glacier, terminal lake and plains to the airport, after a very full day.
We drove back to our accomodation at Mt Cook Village very, very content and full-hearted from our day. We were very fortunate to be able to do this as a family, and very, very lucky with the weather (and also, no-one fell down a cliff, which was a positive). It was one of those experiences that I hope will forever be etched in my memory and was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime day. Thanks Mum & Dad for being so great.
If you’re interested in the routes we took, I’ve tried to draw them on some Google Maps screenshots below (not too sure how successfully though). If you want to know more or have any questions then get in touch! I’m always more than happy to chat.
