Chilling beauty: A journey across the Tasman Glacier Lake

“ON THE COUNT OF THREE,” purrs Evie, in her thick Czech accent. “Put your hands in the water and see how long you can leave them there for. One, two, three.”

Her request is met with shrieks and gasps. We have plunged our hands into the water of a lake made from a melting glacier.

The temperature is not much above freezing.

We are deep in the Southern Alps on New Zealand’s South Island. Aroaki Mt Cook towers above us as our boat rocks slowly on the Terminal Lake of the Tasman Glacier. This is the only glacial boat tour in New Zealand.

We don’t keep our hands in the water for long. In fact, about 20 seconds is the most even the staunchest of us can manage. We wouldn’t last more than a couple of minutes in this water.

“So now you know,” Evie says with a cheeky grin. “Don’t lean over the side of the boat because if you fall in, we’re not coming back for you.”

With that, Evie, who is our guide for the morning, guns the motors and our bright yellow boat jumps away from the dock and heads straight for an iceberg. She swings the boat with expert timing and we rock up against a sheet of blue ice that soars above us.

We run our hands over the hard, smooth and crystal clear surface. From a washed-out hollow, someone picks a small pebble that until recently has been entombed for three centuries. There are the usual jokes about how weird it would be if there was a body in the ice and you found a face staring back at you.

If anything or anyone did fall into the glacier, it would have taken them 300 years to travel the 27 kilometres from the top of the glacier that is just 5m from the summit of Aroaki Mt Cook to the lake. The lake appeared in 1973 as the terminal face turned from a calving to a calving and melting glacier. Evidence, it’s not hard to see, of global warming.

The owners of the Glacial Experience, The Hermitage hotel, say the terminal face of the glacier is in an “active phase” and has been melting faster and faster with increasing numbers of icebergs calving into the growing lake. In the 18 months before our tour, the Tasman Glacier shed 800m in length and deposited larger and larger ice-bergs into the lake. As the effects of climate change and other climatic processes continue to take their toll on New Zealand glaciers, their retreat is sadly imminent. The Tasman Glacier is now approximately 23/23.5km long and 600m deep (at its deepest point) and is both melting and calving at a staggering rate.

Glacier Explorers began operating the tourist craft on the lakes two decades ago and now they show off the glacier and its icebergs to at least 25,000 tourists a year.

We cruise slowly around ‘Sir Ed’ — an iceberg that fell off the glacier the day after Sir Edmund Hillary died and was named in his honour.

At over 200m wide and nearly 100m high it was the largest in the lake until ‘The Perfect 10’ calved off several weeks later. This giant slab of ice was 250m wide, 250m long and over 80m high – imagine a six-storey hotel and you have some idea of the size.

Evie says the falling ice caused a 3m-high tidal wave to surge across the lake. Luckily, it happened between boat trips. It’s the biggest calving ever – so far – off the terminal face.

We stay mostly in the middle of the lake surrounded by moraines, the earth and rock debris left by the retreating glacier. There’s an occasional rumble as rocks and pebbles roll down the 100m high cliffs that surround the lake and splash into the water. Otherwise, it’s cold and silent.

Apparently, we should have been here yesterday, Evie tells us. Within the space of a few hours, two of the lake’s large icebergs reached tipping point as the bottom of the icebergs melted away causing them to become top-heavy and roll over. We missed the show, but what’s left is a treat.

It’s a rare opportunity to see underneath an iceberg. The ice has been eroded away in deep channels, and the formations are surreal, catching the sun and sending out blinding shards of light.

Evie turns the boat around and heads back to the jetty. The boat flies across the water and someone makes a Titanic joke. On cue, Evie stretches out her arms and yells, “I’m the king, sorry queen, of the world.” It’s obviously not the first time she’s heard a similar remark.

We dock and climb out of the rocking boat. As we head back up the moonscape-like gravel path back to the bus, the next load of tourists is heading down the hill. It’s a school trip and the students are determined to test out Evie’s theory on just how long a person can stay in the water. They plan on doing more than the arm test however. Their togs (swimming costumes) are on and they tease, cajole, and push each other off the jetty into the water. We can hear their screams long after we’re up over the hill and out of sight of the lake.

● The Glacier Experience is run by The Hermitage Hotel in the Aoraki Mount Cook National Park. https://www.hermitage.co.nz/experience/glacier-explorers/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20411910681&gbraid=0AAAAACcfZNs9srkwGT_vlWafj811dSA8v&gclid=Cj0KCQjwgpzIBhCOARIsABZm7vGuBwY_6En2zu1MYkyUAh-p4lmwscgyjwO9YMesmJUBhUy2oQ6M5NkaAgZBEALw_wcB

● The Terminal Lakes are closed during winter from June 9 to August 31.

● Adults (aged 15+) from NZ$209 and children (ages 4-14) from NZ$95.

● Guests must be fit and able to walk the 1.5km to and from the lake edge in 25 minutes.

♦ ENDS