Re: (Metrosideros) Bloom seasons - a correction!

Tony and Moira Ryan wrote:
Jason D wrote:

> Moira wrote:


Though we cannot match your main mountain chain for height our Southern Alps do go up to an altitude sufficient to give them a permanent cap of snow. The highest peak being Mt Cook/Aorangi which until a few years ago was 1249 ft high, when it had a small accident to its summit and lost about 20 or 30 feet in a spectacular avalanch. Some climbers had lucky escapes, but fortunately nobody was even hurt.

Glancing at this reply of Moira's I notice that she has omitted one figure from the height of Mt Cook/Aorangi - but it make a BIG difference! The "old" height of this mountain was 12,349 feet.

There are around half a dozen peaks in the Southern Alps which exceed 10,000 feet and many of 8000+.

This is a spectacularly dynamic area - the mountains are constantly being built higher by tectonic movements (at an average rate of about an inch per year!) but - equally - being not very strong rock, they are also wearing down at a similar speed - exemplified by the spectacular collapse of Mt Cook/Aorangi's peak a few years ago - which sent several millions of tons of rock and ice cascading down the mountain, onto the huge Tasman Glacier below, and then sliding right across this wide glacier to the far side of it where some of the stuff "splashed" up the far side of the valley for some hundreds of feet before falling back onto the glacier.

Tony
--
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ.     Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm
NEW PICTURES ADDED 4/Feb/2004

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