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Doubtful Sound
As I described in the previous post, to get to Doubtful Sound we drove four hours, rode across Lake Manapouri in a boat for an hour, then crossed a mountain pass in a bus, which took another hour. Near the top of the pass, they stopped the bus and let us pile out to take photos of this first glance of Doubtful Sound from about 2000 feet above the sound.
We drove down, down, down on a road with a gradient of one in five to the dock you can see below, where we got on a boat. The bus on the dock is one of three busses that brought people over the pass from Lake Manapouri.
The next two photos are taken from the same place. This is the only spot in Doubtful Sound where you can see out to the open ocean and also see back to Wilmot Pass that we came over. In the second photo, look for the notch in the hills in the background. That's Wilmot Pass.
Below is another photo with Wilmot Pass visible. It's one of about 50 pictures I took of the beautiful mountains, stacked up, gray on gray. I'll spare you the other 49, but I was entranced with the shapes.
The boat took us into one of the arms of the sound, then out toward the mouth. The photo below shows the mouth of the Sound.
As we approached the mouth of the sound, we could see the rocks that shelter the sound. Beyond those rocks is the open ocean, the Tasman Sea. The boat went briefly out into the Tasman. The swells were huge, and I immediately turned green. I was grateful we didn't stay out there very long or I would have been very sick.
The rocks at the mouth of Doubtful Sound are covered with New Zealand fur seals, as you can see on the next photo. We also saw a fjordland crested penguin, a small light colored dot on a different rock, which Dave could make out pretty clearly with his binoculars. We also saw blue penguins swimming in a group near the mouth of the sound.
Because of my propensity to get motion sick, I stayed on the outdoor deck the whole trip. People kept coming up to keep me company from time to time. The next photo shows me with Carol, our friend who was visiting from the US.
On the way back toward the dock, they cruised into one of the arms of the sound and turned off the engine. The next photo shows the place where we stopped. They asked people not to walk around and not to take photos, so everyone could enjoy the silence. It was amazing. We could hear the wind on the waves and birds in the trees a long distance away. Pristine, primordial silence.
We got to see a few waterfalls. It rains most days at Doubtful Sound, so we were really lucky that all we had were clouds that day (especially me, who stayed outside the whole time). Because it wasn't raining, we didn't see a lot of waterfalls, but below is one of the tallest ones we saw. Because there is almost no topsoil, when it rains the water rushes off the hills in waterfalls, and when the rain stops, the waterfalls stop pretty much immediately.
There was a naturalist on the boat who explained a lot of things. One of the most interesting was learning about tree avalanches. The fjords were carved by the last ice age, leaving bare rock. Very little soil has accumulated, so the trees are growing precariously. If a tree gets sodden and heavy, it falls down, crashing into the trees below it. They uproot, fall, and create an avalanche of trees. We saw a lot of them, or more accuately, we saw the results of a lot of them. In the photo below you can see how the avalanche was started by one tree at the top, then widened as the trees crashed into trees below.
The next photo shows two tree avalanches. The one on the right is about three years old, the naturalist said, and you can see the moss starting to grow on it. He said the one on the left was less than a week old.
Below are a few more views of tree avalanches at various points on Doubtful Sound.
We drove down, down, down on a road with a gradient of one in five to the dock you can see below, where we got on a boat. The bus on the dock is one of three busses that brought people over the pass from Lake Manapouri.
The next two photos are taken from the same place. This is the only spot in Doubtful Sound where you can see out to the open ocean and also see back to Wilmot Pass that we came over. In the second photo, look for the notch in the hills in the background. That's Wilmot Pass.
Below is another photo with Wilmot Pass visible. It's one of about 50 pictures I took of the beautiful mountains, stacked up, gray on gray. I'll spare you the other 49, but I was entranced with the shapes.
The boat took us into one of the arms of the sound, then out toward the mouth. The photo below shows the mouth of the Sound.
As we approached the mouth of the sound, we could see the rocks that shelter the sound. Beyond those rocks is the open ocean, the Tasman Sea. The boat went briefly out into the Tasman. The swells were huge, and I immediately turned green. I was grateful we didn't stay out there very long or I would have been very sick.
The rocks at the mouth of Doubtful Sound are covered with New Zealand fur seals, as you can see on the next photo. We also saw a fjordland crested penguin, a small light colored dot on a different rock, which Dave could make out pretty clearly with his binoculars. We also saw blue penguins swimming in a group near the mouth of the sound.
Because of my propensity to get motion sick, I stayed on the outdoor deck the whole trip. People kept coming up to keep me company from time to time. The next photo shows me with Carol, our friend who was visiting from the US.
On the way back toward the dock, they cruised into one of the arms of the sound and turned off the engine. The next photo shows the place where we stopped. They asked people not to walk around and not to take photos, so everyone could enjoy the silence. It was amazing. We could hear the wind on the waves and birds in the trees a long distance away. Pristine, primordial silence.
We got to see a few waterfalls. It rains most days at Doubtful Sound, so we were really lucky that all we had were clouds that day (especially me, who stayed outside the whole time). Because it wasn't raining, we didn't see a lot of waterfalls, but below is one of the tallest ones we saw. Because there is almost no topsoil, when it rains the water rushes off the hills in waterfalls, and when the rain stops, the waterfalls stop pretty much immediately.
There was a naturalist on the boat who explained a lot of things. One of the most interesting was learning about tree avalanches. The fjords were carved by the last ice age, leaving bare rock. Very little soil has accumulated, so the trees are growing precariously. If a tree gets sodden and heavy, it falls down, crashing into the trees below it. They uproot, fall, and create an avalanche of trees. We saw a lot of them, or more accuately, we saw the results of a lot of them. In the photo below you can see how the avalanche was started by one tree at the top, then widened as the trees crashed into trees below.
The next photo shows two tree avalanches. The one on the right is about three years old, the naturalist said, and you can see the moss starting to grow on it. He said the one on the left was less than a week old.
Below are a few more views of tree avalanches at various points on Doubtful Sound.
1 comment:
Lynne, I am so impressed! I remember when you were first thinking of going to New Zealand, and then after you had arrived and we visited, and you kept saying how winding the roads were, and how narrow and hilly. And how you would probably never get to Milford Sound because it was such a long trip on winding, narrow, closed-in-by-mountain roads. It seemed to make you sick just talking about it. And here you are taking two boats, an hour long bus ride and freezing weather, to get to the more remote of the two Sounds, and you look so happy and pleased in the pictures. And the tone of the blog, even, is so upbeat and adventurous. Kudos to you and praises to our God and King. What an amazing work he has done in us and His Creation.
Chris Ross
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