Tasman Glacier

The Tasman Glacier is the largest of a group of glaciers in the Southern Alps on the South Island of New Zealand. They extend in a southerly and easterly direction to the Mackenzie Basin faces. The Tasman Glacier is 27 km long, up to 3 km wide and is located entirely within the territory of Mount Cook National Park.

The glacier extends in a southerly direction on the southern slopes of the Minarets and the eastern flank of Aoraki / Mount Cook, whose summit is only 5 km from the glacier. From the north-east of the Tasman Glacier meets the melt water of the Murchison Glacier.

The melting glacier water both ends, as well as the water from Hooker Glacier and Mueller Glacier, flows into the Tasman River, which flows south and into Lake Pukaki. About the Witaki River water reaches north of Oamaru the Pacific Ocean.

The retreat of the glacier

Note the growing tongue Beck lakes, the decline of the "white ice " (ice without moraine ) and the growth of the moraine compared to melting ice.

The glacier is retreating. In the period 1976-2007 he has lost around 5 kilometers. In the wake of the Christchurch earthquake in February 2011, broke from the Tasman Glacier from a piece of ice, with an estimated mass of 30 million tons. It crashed into the lake at the end of the glacier, creating a twelve-foot -high tsunami was generated.