The Franz Josef glacier on the west side of the Southern Alps of New Zealand advanced sharply during the period of the Little Ice Age, actually invading a rain forest at its maximum extent in the early 1700s.
To the west are the saw-edges of glacier-encrusted rock and ice, serrated by more than 30 jagged peaks heavy with snow, the highest of which is 6, 768m-high Huascaran, the tallest mountain in the tropics.