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1 November 2018 Aoraki Mount Cook: Environmental Change on an Iconic Mountaineering Route
Heather Purdie, Tim Kerr
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Abstract

Aoraki Mount Cook is New Zealand's highest mountain and a popular destination for climbers. This study combined historical accounts, photos, and geophysical surveys with modern-day spatial analysis, popular narratives, and interviews to explore how conditions on the most popular climbing route up the mountain, the Linda Glacier route, have changed over time. Results highlight significant change on the lower section of the route due to ongoing downwasting of the Tasman Glacier; but higher on the mountain, changes in the route are more strongly associated with year-to-year variability in snow conditions. Even so, recent observations of new rock exposures and a shortening of the climbing season due to earlier crevasse exposure may be indications of longer-term glacier change.

© 2018 Purdie and Kerr. This open access article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please credit the authors and the full source.
Heather Purdie and Tim Kerr "Aoraki Mount Cook: Environmental Change on an Iconic Mountaineering Route," Mountain Research and Development 38(4), 364-379, (1 November 2018). https://doi.org/10.1659/MRD-JOURNAL-D-18-00042.1
Accepted: 1 September 2018; Published: 1 November 2018
KEYWORDS
crevasses
downwasting
glacier recession
Linda Glacier
mountaineering
New Zealand
Tasman Glacier
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