Thursday, March 17, 2005
The Tree Avalanche Cycle
Today was another perfect day, another fiord, another tunnel.
We drove 120 km from Te Anau up to the top of Milford Sound, another fiord somewhat smaller and more popular than Doubtful Sound. The last 70 km or so of the road are certainly among the most beautiful highway miles I've ever driven -- wide grasslands between mountains, alpine scenes, mountains decorated with cute clouds, ferns in the forests, a tunnel at the top, snowfields, glaciers, waterfalls. It takes about two hours to drive but one can easily get distracted for that amount of time or more by the scenery each way.
The cruise was similar to yesterday's. One thing that was different is that a young man picked the cruise as a setting to propose -- his girlfriend accepted his offer, and then everyone wanted to take their picture. Another thing was a little silly -- this particular boat had three masts with remote-controlled sails, which they unfurled at some point. The silly thing was that they were strictly for effect, and that the boat can't even steer without the motor running. So it was really an annoyance that all the rigging to secure the masts just got in the way of pictures. This boat also had a really good naturalist guide who was wandering amongst the guests with a wireless microphone so she could easily intermingle pointing out things of interest and answering individual questions.
One of the things she taught us about was the Tree Avalanche Cycle. On the exceedingly steep hills surrounding the fiord, trees grow over the years. At some point, they weigh too much and fall off the hill. Since all of their roots are intertwined, entire sections of trees come off at once, creating a tree avalanche. The cycle is that any particular part of the hillside will have a tree avalanche about every 70 to 100 years. She also pointed out rocks containing copper, ones containing iron, ones with lines caused by other rocks scraping against them pushed by the glacier, several fur seals sunning themselves, and a few seabirds out in the very calm Tasman Sea.
It's been a wonderful three days in Fiordland -- tomorrow we leave for the east coast of the South Island.
We drove 120 km from Te Anau up to the top of Milford Sound, another fiord somewhat smaller and more popular than Doubtful Sound. The last 70 km or so of the road are certainly among the most beautiful highway miles I've ever driven -- wide grasslands between mountains, alpine scenes, mountains decorated with cute clouds, ferns in the forests, a tunnel at the top, snowfields, glaciers, waterfalls. It takes about two hours to drive but one can easily get distracted for that amount of time or more by the scenery each way.
The cruise was similar to yesterday's. One thing that was different is that a young man picked the cruise as a setting to propose -- his girlfriend accepted his offer, and then everyone wanted to take their picture. Another thing was a little silly -- this particular boat had three masts with remote-controlled sails, which they unfurled at some point. The silly thing was that they were strictly for effect, and that the boat can't even steer without the motor running. So it was really an annoyance that all the rigging to secure the masts just got in the way of pictures. This boat also had a really good naturalist guide who was wandering amongst the guests with a wireless microphone so she could easily intermingle pointing out things of interest and answering individual questions.
One of the things she taught us about was the Tree Avalanche Cycle. On the exceedingly steep hills surrounding the fiord, trees grow over the years. At some point, they weigh too much and fall off the hill. Since all of their roots are intertwined, entire sections of trees come off at once, creating a tree avalanche. The cycle is that any particular part of the hillside will have a tree avalanche about every 70 to 100 years. She also pointed out rocks containing copper, ones containing iron, ones with lines caused by other rocks scraping against them pushed by the glacier, several fur seals sunning themselves, and a few seabirds out in the very calm Tasman Sea.
It's been a wonderful three days in Fiordland -- tomorrow we leave for the east coast of the South Island.
