![]() As the glacier retreated a gallery was built along the side of Cone Rock to allow access, until it retreated still further. They could climb onto the ice at a lunch shelter at the Chalet Viewpoint, built in 1931 (and which burnt down in 1973). Access to the glacier was via a track along the north side of the Fox River valley and across a swingbridge. ![]() Official glacier guiding began at this point, employing well-known mountaineers like Frank Alack, Harry Ayres, and Tom Christie. Visitors to Weheka would stay in the Williams or Sullivan homesteads, until in 1928 the Sullivan brothers opened the first hotel in the valley, the 40-room Fox Glacier Hostel (which, expanded and refurbished several times over the years, is still operating as a hotel). In the 1920s Westland was being marketed as a tourist destination for the scenic vistas of its mountains, lakes and forests. Harper and William Wilson, and had built the first hut there, known as the iron hut, near the 1896 glacier terminal. Tour group in 1966ĭouglas had previously surveyed the glacier with A.P. "…when I came through that way, I left the track and took to the bush as being far better walking." By 1903 it had been improved and Dr Ebenezer Teichelmann described it as a good horse track. He also noted the road between the farming settlement of Weheka at Fox Glacier and Waiho to the north (now Franz Josef) was very poor. "If the road was cleared up through to Cook's it would be an easy day's stage through to the Fox Glacier one day would do that place, thence down to Malcolms Knob and Gillespies," he wrote. In an 1890s report on "Tourist Attractions in the Okarito District", Charlie Douglas listed several sights in the Fox Glacier area, including the view from Malcolm's Knob at the mouth of the Cook River. Tourism Early tour group inspecting a crevasse įox River emerging from the glacier terminus Lake Matheson formed as a kettle lake within one of these. During the last ice age, its ice reached beyond the present coastline, and the glacier left behind many moraines during its retreat. The outflow of the glacier forms the Fox River. Since then there has been a significant retreat, with the 2009 high level clearly visible as vegetation line on the southern slope above what is left of the lower glacier today. In January 2009, the terminal face of the glacier was still advancing and its vertical or overhanging faces regularly collapsed. In 2006, the average rate of advance was about a metre a week. After retreating for most of the previous 100 years, it advanced between 19. Geography Fox River valley downstream from the glacierįed by four alpine glaciers, Fox Glacier descends 2,600 m (8,500 ft) on its 13 km journey from the Southern Alps towards the coast, finishing near rainforest 300 metres (980 ft) above sea level. With the passage of the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998, the glacier's name changed once again to Fox Glacier / Te Moeka o Tuawe. "In those ancient days I did not pay much attention to the glaciers," he later wrote. Įxplorer Charlie Douglas had already visited the glacier himself in the 1860s, looking for a cow. The Victoria Glacier kept its name, but the lower part of the Albert Glacier was renamed in 1872 after a visit by then Premier of New Zealand Sir William Fox. In 1865, German geologist Julius von Haast was the first to explore and survey the glaciers at the head of this valley, and named them Victoria and Albert, after the queen and her consort. In 1857 local Māori led Pākehā Leonard Harper and Edwin Fox to both glaciers, the first Europeans to see them. Rangi the Sky Father took pity on her and froze them to form the glacier now known as Franz Josef the glacier now known as Fox marks Tuawe's resting place. Hine Hukatere was broken-hearted and her many, many tears flowed down the mountain. Tuawe was a less experienced climber than Hine Hukatere but loved to accompany her, until an avalanche swept him from the peaks to his death. According to oral tradition, Hine Hukatere loved climbing in the mountains and persuaded her lover Tuawe to climb with her. ![]() The glacier is known by local Māori as Te Moeka o Tuawe ('The bed of Tuawe'). It is a major tourist attraction and about 1000 people daily visit it during high tourist season. ![]() Like nearby Franz Josef Glacier, Fox Glacier is one of the most accessible glaciers in the world, with a terminal face as low as 300 m above sea level, close to the village of Fox Glacier. 43☂7′52″S 170☁′4″E / 43.46444°S 170.01778☎ / -43.46444 170.01778įox Glacier ( Māori: Te Moeka o Tuawe officially Fox Glacier / Te Moeka o Tuawe) is a 13-kilometre-long (8.1 mi) temperate maritime glacier located in Westland Tai Poutini National Park on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island.
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