Fox Glacier (; officially Fox Glacier / Te Moeka o Tuawe) is an (2022) temperate maritime glacier located in Westland Tai Poutini National Park on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island.
In 1857 local Māori led Pākehā Leonard Harper and Edwin Fox to both glaciers, the first Europeans to see them. 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. 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.
Explorer Charlie Douglas had already visited the glacier himself in the 1860s, looking for a cow. "In those ancient days I did not pay much attention to the glaciers," he later wrote.
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.
Geography
left|thumb|Fox River valley downstream from the glacier
Fed by four alpine glaciers, Fox Glacier descends on its 13 km journey from the Southern Alps towards the coast, finishing near rainforest above sea level. It lies within the Fox Glacier / Te Moeka o Tuawe catchment on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island. The catchment covers about 110 km<sup>2</sup> and extends westward from the Main Divide to the Tasman Sea. It is bounded by the Victoria Range to the north and the Fox Range to the south, and includes the Fox Glacier and its alpine tributaries, the Victoria and Mascarin glacier valleys, the Fox River valley, and a broad alluvial floodplain extending to the coast. The landscape is marked by very high relief, rising from sea level to peaks of about 3,000 m in less than 35 km.
After retreating for most of the previous 100 years, it advanced between 1985 and 2009. In 2006, the average rate of advance was about a metre a week. In January 2009, the terminal face of the glacier was still advancing and its vertical or overhanging faces regularly collapsed. 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.
The outflow of the glacier forms the Fox River. During the last ice age, its ice reached beyond the present coastline, and the glacier left behind many moraines during its retreat. Lake Matheson formed as a kettle lake within one of these. <gallery mode="packed">
File:Fox Glacier NZ 2.jpg|2007
File:E48544 - Below Fox Glacier, February 2013.JPG|2013
File:E48400 - Lower part of Fox Glacier with glacier mouth, February 2013.jpg|2013, showing the maximum height of the glacier reached around 2009
File:Fox glacier.jpg|Fox River emerging from the glacier terminus
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Advance and retreat
Fox Glacier has undergone repeated phases of advance and retreat since the 1960s. The glacier has experienced three advance-retreat phases over the last half century, with the most recent retreat phase beginning in 2008. Planned by mountain guides Alec and Peter Graham in 1929, all the materials had to be packed up Fox Glacier manually in 1930 in the days before helicopter airlifts. It is the oldest remaining mountain hut in the Southern Alps still on its original site, and is a Category II Historic Building on the Heritage New Zealand list. At an altitude of 1200 m, it was designed to provide climbing opportunities to tourists, rather than as a staging post for mountaineers climbing on the Great Divide. A hut was also built at on Craig's Peak () for overnight climbing trips. On 21 November 2015, seven people were killed when a Eurocopter Écureuil (squirrel) helicopter operated by Alpine Adventures crashed on the glacier.
On 26 March 2019 heavy rains caused flooding in the area, destroying the Waiho Bridge across State Highway 6 at Franz Josef. The rains also triggered an enormous landslide in the Fox River valley that washed away about 150 m of the northern glacier access road and destroyed the car park. The road had already been washed out several times in the previous year, and just two months previously it had been repaired at a cost of $430,000. The Alpine Gardens landslide comprises 50–70 million cubic metres of rock and is still active, moving 100–700 mm a day. The road has been closed indefinitely, with no practical solutions available for repairing it, and access to the glacier is now by helicopter. To compensate for the closure of the access road, a $3.9 million spending package was announced in August 2019 for other tourism projects around Fox Glacier: extending a cycleway to Lake Matheson, upgrading and reopening the track to Lake Gault, improving the road and track access on the south side of the Fox River valley, and reopening the coastal walkway to Galway Beach north of Gillespies Beach.<gallery mode="packed" heights="120">
File:TWC Fox • Nimmo • MRD 2.jpg|The névé of Fox Glacier
File:TWC Fox • Nimmo • MRD 28.jpg|The upper slope of Fox Glacier above Victoria Flat
File:FGG Fox-glacier-heli-hike-group-helicopter 01.jpg|Heli-hiking group on Victoria Flat
File:FGG Fox-glacier-heli-hike-group-helicopter 06.jpg|Ice climbing
File:FGG Fox-glacier-heli-hike-group-helicopter 04.jpg|Ice cave on Victoria Flat
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See also
- Climate change in New Zealand
- Retreat of glaciers since 1850
- Franz Josef Glacier
References
External links
- Fox Glacier area, Department of Conservation
- Fox Glacier Daily Access Update & Live Webcam - Glacier Country Tourism