JSYK, for the rest of my NZ posts, I'll upload larger photos so that people (namely AJ) can have higher-res versions for their computers. I won't always post the largest size available, so if there's one you want to save, go to my Flickr page, find it, click on "All Sizes", then "Download the Original Size".
I tried to photoshop a ton more pictures from today, but then I realized I took the same ones better the "next" day, aka after about 5PM.
This is Milford Sound, one of the most incredible places I've ever been to. A sound is a glacial valley that's been flooded by the ocean. The floor of the valley is about 200m under the surface of the water (which is at sea level), and has vertical walls coming off of it. You can therefore nearly touch where the water meets the valley wall and still be in 600 feet deep water. Not only that, but the mountains surrounding it are extremely rugged and tall. Mitre Peak, the tallest in the area, is no more than several hundred meters from the water's edge (as the crow flies), and it's summit is over 1 mile high. That's gnarly.
Milford Sound happens to be the wettest place in New Zealand, and among the wettest in the world (depending on where you look, it's only second to Mt Waialeale in Hawaii [this site doesn't show Milford Sound (it's tiny and not terribly well known, so it might be overlooked on a lot of these lists), but using wikipedia's estimations on it's annual precipitation, it would fall at #2]). It receives approximately 266 inches of rainfall every year, compared to Boulder's ~20 inches and Seattle's ~40 inches. This causes thousands of temporary waterfalls to sprout during rainstorms, and the permanent ones to gush hardcoredly. We came in during monsoon-hurricane style rains and winds, and left when it was calm waters and blue skies. We got to see a whole gamut of weather conditions. More pictures of this to come in the next post...
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(Picture taken morning after deadly hurricane-force storm from the parking lot we slept in. The waterfalls started to recede by this time, but the clouds were still raining on the higher peaks.)
1 comments:
Thanks man! I LOVE my new desktop photos.
SO, quick facts:
It turns out that the upper west coast gets more rain. And has had the wettest year on record. Just learned that.
A sound is a flooded river valley. A Fiord is a flooded glacial valley.
The indigenous wattle crow, or the Kakapo, is both endangered and awesome. It has a really cool call. It can't fly that well, so it just runs and glides around, and then stops and sings it's beautiful song.
Aweome
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