What better
way to get your day started than hiking & climbing up a glacier? We had two to choose between even! What luxury!
We decided to drive a little further north before indulging in such
wonders and tackle Franz Joseph Glacier.
Before we
said goodbye to Fox Glacier village we followed a small sign to a vantage point
for our highest peak – Aoraki/Mt Cook.
We had only the briefest of glimpses of it from the east side a few days
earlier, so why not try out luck from the west?
And we struck it just right this time! There were only a couple of
lonely clouds, adrift in the blue expanse above us. No way were they going to spoil the vista
this morning. J A simple circular table was inscribed with numerous
arrows and names for nearby mountains, glaciers and rivers; among them Mt Cook
and Mt Tasman, neighbouring peaks, and the two highest in the land.
The West
Coast Highway from Fox to Franz Joseph lead us through lush, untouched native
rainforests - apart from the curving black scar of the tarmac we cruised
upon. An obvious contrast of the old and
new worlds of New Zealand.
Time had
taken its toll on the Glaciers too; our guide pointed out where the terminal
face of the ice had hovered in past decades.
A grim reminder of the power of a warming climate. Consequently the first stage of our glacier
adventure was a hike across the grey field of scattered rocks before we could
climb upon the ice. The icy river beside
us was littered with car-sized chunks of ice – a result of the collapse of
several tonnes of ice from the glacier face only a few hours earlier. We felt lucky that it hadn’t occurred while
we were exploring around up there!
Our guide,
Donkey, ensured we all had our crampons on right and then went ahead, cutting
steps into the ice with his axe. It was
a bit strange to be walking on the ice with spikes protruding from beneath our
feet; how safe were they for preventing us sliding away to our doom?? Pretty damn good it seemed :)
Donkey lead
us away from the main path up the centre of the glacier, instead towards the
northern edge, where he crept to the lip of a giant ice cave and chipped off
some couch-sized chunks of ice. It was
spectacular to see these pieces cut loose and plummet to the rocky floor with a
crash that boomed off the walls around us.
I also tried hacking away some pieces of glacier, but with much less
success than Donkey. But I did get to
pose with the axe, looking like an amateur mountaineer.
On our trip
down, the path almost disappeared - there was a giant gash through the ice as
if some careless Ice God had swept his axe through the glacier. We were supposed to walk through here?? We could only shuffle along sideways,
squeezed between the claustrophobic walls of eerie blue ice.
And then
before we knew it, we were out and saying our farewells to the ice. On the hike back to the van, a couple of
American girls decided to test the waterproofing of the jackets by posing for
photos in the middle of a freezing waterfall.
Result: waterfall 1, Americans 0.
But they came out smiling anyway; another crazy story for their travel
tales no doubt!
