The second day of spring saw us venturing into the depths of the West Coast. Our friend Shannon was visiting, and my beautiful cousin Kylie was over on a quick trip to see her mum after being abroad for over 2 years, so what better reason to experience the wild, wet wilderness while we caught up with them.
We stayed the night in Hokitika with Kylie at her mum and partner Rex's home which is a funked up warehouse positioned at the back of their pounamu (greenstone/jade) carving studio and shop. We had the pleasure of watching how everything was done and I was lucky enough to be gifted with a pair of pounamu earrings that my Aunty carved for me.
Kylie took us to admire the deep turquoise waters of the Hokitika gorge which was gorge-ous (haha), the rugged, booming beach typical of the West Coast, and to some of the deep, dark lakes. It is such a mystical, enchanting and hauntingly beautiful part of New Zealand, its hard not to get caught up in the moments!
The following day we back-tracked to Fox Glacier where we met up with Shannon (and his nipples)...
8am we stumbled into the Fox Glacier ice climbing centre, and after some organising of our gear and a quick briefing, us three and our trusty guide Gerard hopped on the vintage Bedford bus gaitors and all...
and after a short ride, began to venture into the surrounding forest of the mighty glacier. The view just from the base was amazing enough, this collosal mass of moving ice stretching 13km long and 2600 metres high, receiving 45 metres of annual snowfall was awe inspiring. It was also quite cool to find out that the reddish tinge on the surface was infact soil blown over from central Australia. Quite a contrast to the transperant, cool blue of the dense ice.
An hour or so of uphill walking left us hot and sweaty, and anxiously strapping our crampons onto our boots. Helmets on heads and ice picks in hands we began to learn the technique of climbing sheer walls of ice. I must say that after figuring out how to not fall on your face with crampons on your feet things got easier fast!
Because I have done no sort of climbing what so ever, I found it very challenging to accept that I was going to be hanging from a towering vertical wall with just the spikes on my toes and the 1/2 inch tips on my ice picks. But once that trust kicked in, I was having the time of my life!
After a couple of hours of practising on easy walls our guide decided to mix it up a bit and before we knew it, we were being lowered into a 10 metre deep crevasse!
The feeling of being near wedged in the butt crack of a glacier and trying to climb your way out of it by clawing at artic blue walls of glass with barely enough room to swing your axe really did something for the adrenal glands!
From here Gerard took us to check out a moulin, which is a large hole in the glacier surface caused by melting ice. It was spectacular to be sitting within the glacier as water gushed about in the depths beneath you, and above are blue skies (and the little grinning faces of Nick and Shannon!)
On exiting I lost my footing and found myself dangling by nothing but my arms! That was exhilirating and/or petrifying I must say! Definately a highlight!
From there we decended the glacier frollicking in some of the features along the way such as this ice tunnel
and finally back across the glacier to collect a group of day trippers that were to follow us back to base. A member of their group had not shown the crampons the respect they deserve and ended up with a gaping hole in her leg, and so needed to be air-lifted from the glacier. We came to realise the power of crampons on this day, and are proud to announce that "we love crampons!"
We decended the glacier and trudged back through the surrounding forest. I have to say that after our adventure, I felt an exciting connection with the whole climbing over the ice thing, and am looking forward to doing it again in Canada.
The sun was beginning to set as we arrived back at the hostel and so we took a long shower and headed down to the pub for a meal and a well deserved beer!
The next day we took our time getting back to Wanaka with a morning walk around Lake Matheson
and a few stops at the various waterfalls and beautiful Blue Pools. I have to say I was pretty natured out by the end, but definately invigorated!
