Last week our good buddy Shannon hopped aboard a plane to
pop over and visit, so we decided to drive up the wet and wild West Coast to
meet him and do a little exploring along the way. It is a truly amazing place
but oh so very wet! We left Wanaka on a glorious cloudless day and drove West
through some of the most spectacular scenery you could see anywhere. Wanaka is
beautiful with its deep blue lake and surrounding snow capped mountains, and it
seems as you drive West things just intensify; the lakes get more azure blue,
the mountains get larger until about an hour into the drive, there is a
dramatic change and you plunge into dense temperate rainforest and waterfall
country through a winding mountain pass shrouded in a mysterious fog. Boom, the
heavens open and it rains and rains. It is quite mystifying to look up at a
hillside and see more waterfalls cascading down through the jungle than you
even have time to count. Coming from drought ridden Melbourne, it really
boggles the mind how a place can be so damn wet, but it is ironic I guess that
Australia’s hot dry climate is actually responsible. Vast quantities of air are
heated over the deserts of Central Australia, and carried East by the prevailing
winds known as the ‘Roaring Forties’ where the warm air evaporates a huge
amount of moisture from the Tasman Sea. Slamming into the colossal mountains that
span the West coast of NZ, the air rises and cools, dumping the collected
moisture in the process. Our guide told us that the area which feeds Fox
glacier has an average annual snowfall of around 45 metres!
We made our way up the rugged coast across what seemed like
hundreds of one-lane bridges, to Hokitika where Kylie (Justine’s cousin) who
had just returned from 2 years abroad was home to visit her mum. Justine was
pretty excited to see her as she would be flying to Melbourne in a day or two
to live, and being off on an extended trip ourselves, we probably wouldn’t get
the chance again for a while. Jackie (Kylie’s Mum) and her partner run a jade
carving business so we got to see how the famous NZ greenstone carvings are
made, and Jackie whipped up a pair of greenstone earrings for Justine right
there on the spot! We had a bit of a look around at the beautiful gorge with
water so green and spectacular that it almost looks like it isn’t real, then said
our goodbyes and headed back down the coast to meet Shannon in Fox Glacier.
Our day of ice climbing on the glacier was incredible! Once
fitted out with all the gear we headed up the trail which was about 1 hour of
difficult hiking up the side of the canyon wall, then decended onto the ice.
After some instruction we mastered the art of walking in crampons, which is not
as easy as it sounds…near the end of our day a lady on another tour caught her
crampon in her pants while taking a step and stabbed a deep hole in her leg
requiring a helicopter to get her out! Shannon managed to fall flat on his face
at least twice! So yeah, an extra 2 inches of steel hanging off your feet can
be tricky.
We started on a nice easy wall to get the basics of climbing, and learning
to trust the gear.
No mean feat when you are hanging from an ice axe which you
have only managed to punch into the wall about half an inch. It takes all your logic
and guts to put your faith in it. After an hour or two our guide said we looked
pretty good at it so he would find something a bit more exciting, but instead
of just going to a steeper taller wall like they usually do, he went way out
there for us because there was only the 3 of us in the group. Next thing you
know we are being lowered into a 10 metre deep crevasse!
Whoa, I was crapping
myself as, if you fell, it would be certain death. The crevasse tapers away to
nothing and you would be firmly wedged at the bottom. Hacking your way up a
sheer wall of glass-like ice is one hell of a buzz, especially when you can
hardly swing your axe due to the opposite wall. After the crevasse we made our
way to one last climb for the day in a Moulin (a large hole in the glacier surface
caused by melting water). It was pretty spooky to be down there looking out the
top, water pouring in all the while. At one point Justine lost her footing and
found herself dangling from her arms, which gave her the biggest thrill of the
day I reckon! Did help to reinforce how much weight those things will hold if
positioned properly though.
The glacier is beautiful and we really got to see
it under all conditions, overcast, sunny, rainy and even a hail storm, yep,
just what you need on a glacier…more ice! It is pretty cool to see some areas
with layered pinkish marks in the blue ice, which are actually dust from
central Australia that has been blown high into the air and carried here on the
wind. All in all, we would all like to concede “we love crampons!!”
The following day three very weary ice climbers made their
way slowly back to Wanaka, Stopping at most every scenic bushwalk and place of
interest along the way, and there are a LOT! Of course Shannon had come to
visit NZ to ski, so it was up to Cardrona for us but sadly he blew out his knee
at the end of the first day so that was the end of that. Yep, shit really does
happen, but we popped over to Queenstown to look around instead and had a
pretty good night out with most of our flatmates who had all come over too.
Even found a bar selling “loopy juice” Need I say more? Anyway, I am writing
this on my flight back to Melbourne so by the time I post it for you to read I
will be there! Will do my best to catch up with people in the week or so I am
in town so don’t be a stranger.
