Some had to be chipped out of the ice, but most of the 800 tea bags buried on Mt Cardrona near Wanaka during the summer have been recovered.
The tea bags are part of a climate change study being carried out by Dunedin-based Landcare Research scientist Dr Barbara Anderson.
Dr Anderson is measuring changes taking place on a ridge stretching from the peak of Mt Cardrona at 1936m to the valley floor at 500m.
The Lipton tea bags were buried at the end of January and left for three months to measure decomposition rates at different altitudes and orientations.
The tea bags were recovered at the weekend.
Tea bags - tetrahedron-shaped green tea and rooibos varieties - are used internationally to derive the ''Tea Bag Index''.
The latest tea bag information will be used as a benchmark for similar studies in future.
The tea bags will be dried, weighed and compared in a laboratory in Dunedin.
Dr Anderson told the Otago Daily Times yesterday varying degrees of decomposition were already evident.
''You could actually see what was happening. The green tea bags, which are the ones that are supposed to decompose faster; in some places there was almost nothing left of them.''
The red tea bags had decomposed less quickly, as was expected, but there was a ''very big difference'' depending on elevation and sunshine.
Dr Anderson said the top of the mountain was ''frozen solid'' so tea bags had to be chipped out carefully with a spade.
She was pleased to have recovered them before snow became a permanent feature on Mt Cardrona for the winter.
