From: Pat Cain <cain_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.new-zealand
Subject: Changes to Mt Cook / New Zealand Geographic
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 92 14:45:34 +1300
Organization: thesidewaysmachine, WCC City Net, Wellington, New Zealand

Here is some stuff from the New Zealand Geographic.  I'm reproducing it
(without permission..) for those overseas as I think it's well worth
subscribing to.  At the bottom of this article is a short article from
the magazine about how Mt Cook has changed since the avalanche.  I've
also included a list of the articles in a recent issue.

Those homesick kiwis overseas might want to think about subscribing as
overseas airmail subs are available.  And no, I'm not associated in any
way with the magazine.

details:
  New Zealand Geographic is published 4 times a year.  Airmail subs for
  overseas are NZ$69.95 for Oz/South Pacific, and NZ$89.95 for
  elsewhere, enquiries to NZ Geographic, PO Box 8900, Symonds St,
  Auckland  ph. +64 4 623-1043  fax +64 4 623-1033


Articles in the January-March issue cover Mt Cook, Space, and
Changing food tastes in New Zealand--24 pages long--How we have gone
from a slab of meat, dollop of mashed potato and boiled cabbage to being
more adventurous--well worth the read ... their pavlova recipe:

  4 egg whites          pinch salt
  1 C castor sugar      2 t cornflour
  1 t vinegar           1 t vanilla essence

    Beat egg whites with salt until stuff. Add sugar a tablespoonful at
a time, beating after each addition until it is completely dissolved.
Sprinkle over cornflour, vinegar and vanilla essence and fold in lightly.
Pile onto buttered greaseproof paper sprinked with cornflour, or straight
onto aluminium foil. Do not flatten out the mixture too much if you
want a marshmallow centre.
    Place in a preheated moderate oven, reduce heat to low, and cook for
1 1/4 hours. Allow pavlova to cool in oven to avoid cracking. When cool,
spread with whipped cream and decorate with fruit of your choice.

and Anzac Biscuits:

  120g butter           1 T golden syrup
  120g sugar            120g flour
  120g rolled oats      120g desiccated coconut
  1 t baking powder

    Melt butter and golden syrup together and add sugar to dissolve. Mix
with flour, rolled oats, coconut and baking powder. Roll into small
balls and flatten onto a greased oven tray.
    Bake for 15 minutes at 160 deg C (325 deg F);


And an article about the possum "Brushtail possums are a protected
species in their native Australia. Across the Tasman, they have
established themselves as New Zealand's most voracious and intractable
pest, attacking simultaneously the beauty of our forests and the good
name of our farming products."--29 pages long (with plenty of full
colour pictures) and a wall poster giving facts etc. on the possum.


An article about Fiordland National Park -- "FNP consists of a million
hectares of rock and river, forest and fiord--some of the wildest and
most untouched country in New Zealand. The place is a magnet to
adventurers, who come here from around the world to experience true
wilderness.".    It has some beautiful photos of the park (all colour)
and is 19 pages long.

Then there's an article about diving in Fiordland and all the different
things to find .. once again some great photography -- 10 pages long.

Then an article about the Puriri tree: "With their deep green foliage
and regal grey trunks, puriri are indeed princes among Northland's
trees" .. 16 pages long covering history, their flowers, growing puriri,
what woodturners make from puriri, puriri fence posts on farms(!) and
lots more.

And a short article on Southland.


Short article about the changing Mt Cook (included were various
before/after photographs):

The new-look Cook

SHORTLY AFTER MIDNIGHT on December 14, 1991, a seismograph at Twizel
recorded shock waves which in 20 seconds reached the magnitude of a 3.9
earthquake.  But this was no earthquake.  Seventy-five kilometres away,
the top of Mt Cook was collapsing. An awesome rock avalanche had let
rip, dislodging 14 million cubic metres of rock buttress and glaciers,
and sending them on a wild cascade 2720 metres down the mountain.

The majestic East Face, the summit of New Zealand's highest mountain,
was transformed.  A giant had toppled in a frantic hail of rock, snow
and ice which at times reached speeds of 450 kilometres an hour.  Twizel
recorded the faint falling of rocks for hours afterwards.

The avalanche also dislodged one of the more easily assimilated pieces
of Kiwi trivia.  Generations had learned that Mt Cook was 12,349 feet
high--so easy to remember, it seemed incontrovertible.  Its metric
equivalent, 3764 metres, never sat so easily in the cerebral filing
system.

Now Aorangi-Mt Cook is 10 metres shorter, and shrinking.  Still the
Cloud Piercer, but immanently fallible.

The mountain is falling down under its own weight, but scientists are
matter-of-fact about this.  "All our mountains are unstable, and a
mountain falling down is not an unusual phenomenon," Christchurch DSIR
geomorphologist, Dr Mauri McSaveney says.  "It's something that's been
happening for thousands of years."

On its upper slopes, the mountain does not have the glacial ice flow
which causes erosion lower down.  Rock falls are the only means of
erosion.  The December avalance did away with the theory that the high
peaks of Cook were high because their rock was slightly stronger than
that lower down.

Like many mountains in this area of the Southern Alps, Mt Cook is made
of sedimentary rock called greywacke--very hard sandstone and siltstone
which is about 200 million years old.  The giant rock fall gave
scientists a rare opportunity to look inside the mountain, and McSaveney
was amazed at how fractured and weak it really was.  The loose,
shattered rock he saw was what mountaineers call "Weet-Bix".  Mt Cook is
not made of stern stuff.

"Yet if anyone had asked me on Friday (13th December), 'How save is Mt
Cook?' I'd have said 'Perfectly safe'," says McSaveney.

Veteran Cook climber Rob Hall agrees.

That Friday there were two climbing parties in Plateau Hut, about four
kilometres from the summit.

Alarms were set for midnight.  David Ellis and Nich Shearer planned to
climb Mt Tasman.  Hall and his three companiouns were preparing to climb
Mt Cook via Zurbriggen Ridge.  Their timing was impeccable.  A decision
to leave any earlier and they would have been right in the path of the
avalanche.

"It would have been a spectacular way to go," Hall can now laugh.

Awaking at midnight, Hall's first thought was that the wind had come up.
He'd gone to bed on a clear, moonless night.  Ellis went outside.  He,
too heard the sound of wind, but, eerily, there was no air movement.
The climbers heard a loud rumbling sound.  Hall thought it might be an
icefall in the Hochstetter.

From the hut windows they gazed at the peaks outlined against a black
sky.

"Suddenly, I saw huge yellowy sparks, and realised that it was not ice
falling--it was rocks," says Hall.  To Ellis, the sparks and bright gree
flashes looked like incendiary bombs falling.

The climbers were oblivious to danger, more fascinated than frightened.
Sometimes there are strange sounds in the mountains.  Where there are
glaciers, rock avalanches are quite common.

"We just didn't realise the scale of it," says Hall, "that by morning
there'd be a pile of rock at the bottom of the mountain."

Hall's party changed tack and decided to climb nearby Mt Dixon.

Ellis and Shearer set out across the Grand Plateau away from the sound
of rumbling and grinding rocks.  By torchlight they could see a fine
mist.  As they crossed the northern end of the Plateau they began to
cough up dust.

"As dawn approached we looked across, and there was this huge dust cloud
over the East Face.  It hung there until nearly 10 o'clock," says Ellis.

Daylight revealed that the avalanche had crossed within 500 metres of
the hut as it curled around and roared its way down the Hochstetter.

On the ridge of Mt Dixon, Hall surveryed the damage.  "The scar looked
enormous--as if a blanket had spewed down the mountainside and turned it
from white to black."

The 500-metre scar can be seen from some points on the Canterbury
Plains, 100 kilometres from the mountain.

Bryan Moore was the first to brave Mt Cook after the avalanche.  On
January 2, 1992, he went up the Hooker Face in perfect conditions.
Perched on the thin inclined sliver of ice at the top, he gingerly
surveyed the wasteland--the "acres and acres" of loose rock which is now
the East Face.

By winter, snow will dignify the Grand Plateau snowfields once more,
hiding the chaos beneath.  Winter will also bring a veneer of ice and
snow to the jagged East Face, but some five years will pass before
glacier ice flow carries the last of the debris through the now defiled
Hochstetter icefall, and it will be many years before thick glacier ice
forms in the scar.

Why the avalanche happened on a calm, clear night is a mystery.  The
mountain does not yield up its secrets easily, and history is of little
help.  In 1873 there was a rock fall of similar magnitude on Mt Cook,
but McSaveney can find only one reference to it in a scientific journal.
It seems it happened in a perioud where no-one took much notice of such
things.

The winter of 1991 was one of the snowiest on record.  The most
plausible theory is that the movement of ice may have plucked rocks from
the mountainside.  If all or part of an apron glacier clinging to a
mountain face falls, it freqently takes some rock with it.  If this rock
is supporting an unstable buttress, the "chock" stone may be dislodged.
Then it's a case of "chocks away!"  But any evidence that this happened
in the December avalanche would have been swiftly buried.

McSaveney is certain of one thing; it will happen again.  The most
frustrating thing is not knowing when.  "It might take a century, it
might happen next week."

The top of the East Face scar stands at a 70-degree angle.  To remain
stable, it needs to be around 55 degrees.  Bits will continue to fall
off, or there'll be another big fall.  The mountain peak wil shrink as
the sharp feathered edge of ice is weathered to a stable shape.  So, for
some time to come, it's pencils only in the record books.

from the Hermitage, Cook's peaks look little different--a relief, no
doubt, to the souvenir sellers.  From Okarito in South Westland the
mountain's profile is dramatically altered.  And if a glacier forms in
the face of the scar, the East Face will provide a fresh challenge to
the dauntless climber.

"It will need a technically competent climber," says McSaveney.  "This
will be a mighty ice climb."

The new East Face conqueror will need to be sure of one thing: that no
rocks have falen for quite some time.  "It could be a rather long wait,"
McSaveney says drily.

                                                by Katherine Findlay.