Mountains
This is Mt Cook on Easter Monday from the Hermitage. We reached Twizel that day from Arrowtown, and because the weather was clear we went on to see the Hermitage area. You have to take your opportunities in both hands in mountain country; we know from the numbers who visit us here in Taranaki and leave without a glimpse of our mountain!
The Southern Alps are quite different from the volcanic Taranaki though. I had read about the way the Pacific Plate pushes up over the Australian Plate and forms the Alps, just like the Swiss Alps or the Himalayas. But I was not ready for the new details we learnt from the Tranzalpine commentary when we took the train trip from Christchurch to Greymouth and back.
Such as that the Southern Alps are the fastest growing mountains anywhere. And that if they were not weathering at a very fast rate they would be several times the height of Everest.
At one point on the railway line just south of Lake Brunner, between Otira and Greymouth, the train is travelling along the fault at the base of the mountains. An earthquake like the Kaikoura one at that point could shoot most of Westland into the Tasman Sea!
Fortunately the weather was good for most of our trip, and we had views of snow-tipped or bare mountains from the plane on the way down,
from the Canterbury Plains
from the road to Glenorchy,
and from Wanaka:
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