The Mueller Glacier is a long

glacier A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its Ablation#Glaciology, ablation over many years, often Century, centuries. It acquires dis ...

flowing through

Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park is in the South Island of New Zealand. Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest mountain, and the eponymous village lie within the park. The area was gazetted as a national park in October 1953 and consists ...

in the

South Island The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman ...

of New Zealand. It lies to the west of

Mount Cook Village Aoraki / Mount Cook, often referred to as Mount Cook Village, is located within New Zealand's Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park at the end of , only south of the summit of the country's highest mountain, also called Aoraki/Mount Cook, in the So ...

within the

Southern Alps The Southern Alps (; officially Southern Alps / Kā Tiritiri o te Moana) is a mountain range extending along much of the length of New Zealand's South Island, reaching its greatest elevations near the range's western side. The name "Southern ...

, flowing roughly north-west from its névé near Mount Montgomerie before curving around the Sealy Range as it approaches its terminus. Various other glaciers feed into the Mueller Glacier along its route, including the Frind and Huddleston Glaciers. The glacier ends at a small unnamed terminal lake, which is also fed by meltwater from the nearby Hooker Glacier. This lake is the source for the Hooker River, a small tributary of the

Tasman River The Tasman River is an alpine braided river flowing through Canterbury, in New Zealand's South Island. The river's headwaters are in Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park, where it is the outflow of the proglacial Tasman Lake. It is also fed by th ...

, which flows into

Lake Pukaki Lake Pukaki is the largest of three roughly parallel alpine lakes running north–south along the northern edge of the Mackenzie Basin on New Zealand's South Island. The others are Lakes Tekapo and Ohau. All three lakes were formed when the te ...

. The glacier was named after German-Australian botanist and explorer Baron Ferdinand von Mueller. Based on dating of a yellow-green lichen of the Rhizocarpon subgenus, Mueller Glacier is considered to have had a

Little Ice Age The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of regional cooling, particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region. It was not a true ice age of global extent. The term was introduced into scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939. Ma ...

maximum mass between 1725 and 1730. White Horse Hill, a small hill to the north of Mount Cook Village, represents the

moraine A moraine is any accumulation of unconsolidated debris (regolith and rock), sometimes referred to as glacial till, that occurs in both currently and formerly glaciated regions, and that has been previously carried along by a glacier or ice shee ...

left from this period.

References

Glaciers of New Zealand Landforms of Canterbury, New Zealand Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park {{CanterburyNZ-geo-stub

See also

References