On the Fox Glacier

---

The glacier gods were with us. Typically weather on the glaciers is cloudy and often raining, but not today. We awoke to a beautiful, almost cloudless day to walk up onto the Fox Glacier. We dressed up warmly (and after a fine flat white), headed out on a 4 hour guided tour - aptly named the "Fox Trot". We were bused to the foot of the glacier on rickety old vehicles which are advertised as "historic buses".

It was an hour and half climb up the gorge to reach the glacier through ferns and regenerating temperate rainforest. It was quite a climb (including more than 500 formed steps). It was hard going, but everyone made it up without complaint. From high on the track the view of the glacier and its upper and lower icefalls was fantastic.

We strapped on our crampons and spent at least an hour on the terminal face of the glacier itself. The route takes you amongst crevasses and ice ridges and leads onto the middle of the glacier for more spectacular views. We squeezed through one particularly tight crevasse and crawled on hands and knees through an ice tunnel. Avery, Josh and I accepted the challenge to lick the ice walls - the second time in the last couple of weeks that I have been asked to pose with my tongue hanging out (see August 11, 2007). It is comforting to know that I will always be able to fall back on a career as a tongue model.

After our long tramp back down the glacier, we had a round of beer (the ginger variety for the children) at the Cafe Saddle & Saloon. In my experience there is nothing like a cold beer after bit of glacier climbing. In retrospect the climb was a bit more challenging that we had thought at first. It was incredibly impressive that the kids climbed up and down without one word of complaint. On a side note, their was a reasonably tricky anagram on the wall of the Cafe: yrdarsomanimororsessasisdenderrorses. The kids were able to solve it over lunch, getting themselves free cookies - I'll post the answer tomorrow.

Exhausted, we drove down to Wanaka - a particularly picturesque drive through the Southern Alps. We made a few stops along the way at random locations.

What a day.

---

Photos

Marie Conquers
Marie stands dutifully for her picture on the way down from walking on the ice.