New Zealand: Glenorchy

A few days before we were going to be in Queenstown I looked online for a hotel but the town was so crowded in February that I couldn’t find a single place to stay. None. Zero. I did, however, find an opening at a hotel in Glenorchy, at the northern end of Lake Wakatipu about an hour north of Queenstown. That turned out to be a good thing because I don’t know if we’d otherwise have taken the scenic drive along the eastern side of the lake. The picture above shows the mountains outside Glenorchy late in the afternoon on February 21st. Notice once more that fields of ice had lasted into the warmest part of the year.

After settling in, we went out again during the last hour of daylight and drove a few miles further north, where we found this rainbow:

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: Two views of Lake Wakatipu and mountains on a cloudy afternoon

One of the things that makes Queenstown so touristy (and so hard during the summer to find accommodations in and even to park in) is beautiful Lake Wakatipu. Here are two views from the eastern shore of the lake north of Queenstown on the overcast afternoon of February 21. Notice a few residual patches of ice in the mountains even in the warmest part of the year.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: a closer look at the Franz Josef Glacier

Above is a February 20th view taken from the end of the trail near the base of the Franz Josef Glacier on the west side of New Zealand’s South Island. Below is an even better look at the details of the ice and rocks at the place where the glacier passes from existence to non-existence.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: a bluish white

February 20 is still the height of summer in New Zealand. Nevertheless, on that date we hiked the hour or so from the carpark to the front of the Franz Josef Glacier, which is located in the Southern Alps half-way down the western side of the South Island. Before we’d gone too far along the trail I stopped to photograph the still-distant glacier. Europe and North America have their glaciers, but none that I know of are within sight of tree ferns. They were an excellent accompaniment to the first glacier I’d ever seen in person.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

I wasn’t expecting another chance this season…

I wasn’t expecting another chance this season to photograph frostweed ice. My outlook changed two nights ago when the weather forecast for the morning of January 7th predicted a low temperature of around 23°F (–5°C). Out I went into that cold morning, once more to Great Hills Park, and sure enough some of the frostweed plants were doing their thing again. Because of previous performances, this time practically all the ice displays were way down low on the stalks, often touching the ground. In my 90 minutes of taking pictures I went mostly for close and abstract views of the ice, one of which you see here.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

A contrast in strata

Above: Geological strata in Sedona (Arizona) on October 20.

Below: Frostweed ice strata in Austin (Texas) on December 19.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

The spy who came in from the cold

Click for better quality and clarity.

The person in the title is me, who came in after two hours yesterday morning spent spying on the ice formations produced by frostweed plants (Verbesina virginica) in Great Hill Park. For the first time this season the temperature in Austin dipped below freezing overnight, as the forecast had predicted, so I felt duty-bound to bundle up and go out into the morning’s 29° in hopes that that would have been cold enough for frostweed to do its thing. It had been.

Unlike pictures of the phenomenon I’ve posted here in other years, this photograph emphasizes the way the ice first splits the outer part of a frostweed stalk. Notice that the tissue just inside the brown bark is still green.

If you’re new to frostweed’s ice trick and would like more of an explanation, along with images showing other aspects of the phenomenon, you can follow these links:

https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/frostweed-explains-its-name/

https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/frostweed-debuts-its-ice-trick-for-2012/

https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2013/12/08/no-frost-but-frostweed-did-its-icy-trick/

https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2014/11/20/cold-enough/

https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/a-closer-look-at-frostweed-ice/

https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2014/12/30/cold-enough-once-again/

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman