Advertisement
Published: January 4th 2011
Days 10 - 12 Glacier Country to the Top of the Island
Day 8: Happy New Years Eve… Let’s Drive
Today was the first long day of driving, 6.5 hours from Te Anau to the Glaciers. Nothing too exciting happened today except for some more heavenly scenery. Evan is really getting better at taking pictures, and we played ‘Camera Fire Drill’ where I would let him off at a scenic road point, drive a few kilometers and turn around and come fetch him. The products of this are shown in some of the pictures. The highways here are unbelievably curvy - behind every bend was a fresh treat for the adventurous eyes.
Until tomorrow’s adventures…
Day 9: Franz Josef Glacier Hike…
Today we took on the steepest and fastest flowing commercially guided glacier in the world. The morning started early(like most of the mornings have, adventure doesn’t wait for sleepers). Once we reached the glacier valley, a huge mass (or wall) of ice awaited us between the two sheer walls on the far side of the rock floor, with sides of steep granite and reaching waterfalls. The tricky thing about the glaciers is that because of
the incredible size of the glacier the valley appeared to be only a few hundred meters away. Those few hundred meters in actuality turned out to be some 3 kilometers. Nevertheless, we put the crampons (ice spikes which attached around the outside of the boot) and hit the ice. The most incredible thing about the NZ glaciers was the dynamic, raw, unforgiving he ice, systematic nature of it. The glacier is always receding or advancing, opening new holes, cracks, and crevices by the minute. What this means, practically, is that a route taken yesterday on the glacier may not be passable today. Our guides, definitely required to make our way through the ice, literally had to hack away the path in front of us in order to advance on the glacier. While we were on the ice we had the fortunate experience of hearing the glacier crack with it’s thunderous, deep, sounds cape. Later on the way back, we witnessed something else that few others get to see, a glacier ‘chunk’ from the top region, probably some 15 meters wide and equally as tall, broke off and fell with a satisfying bellow. I unfortunately was unable to record either of
these events, but the sounds were so captivating that they were ingrained in my mind (and left me with a fun challenge to think about how to portray these events with traditional instrumentation). I did however get an awesome recording of a glacier ice-melt stream, rocks, and the howling wind in the ice tunnels. Hopefully, they turned out. The hike got pretty cold, after all we were standing on a gigantic ice mass, but the cold chill was mitigated by the wild terrain. Adrenaline rushed after we leapt across crevasses, roped up steep slopes, and shimmied through very narrows passages. We saw nature at it’s best -wild, uncut, and unforgiving. Today was easily one of the most remarkable days of our lives.
On a separate side note, I heard one of the women on our group talking and immediately I turned around and asked her, “you are French Canadian aren’t you?”. I knew that accent quite well, sounded just like Mom and my other Canadian family. Turns out she was, and lived a province over from New Brunswick.
Included with our hike was access to some hot pools, where we were able to hop from mild, medium, and
hot temperatures to soothe our tired limbs. Later, we again made our famous backpacker burritos and finished them with no problem to our hungry stomachs.
Until tomorrow’s adventures…
Advertisement
Tot: 0.218s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0306s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mimi
non-member comment
Glaciers
Sarah, your writing does tell a story, but your descriptive words is a treat - makes an even better story. Great pics too. Those burritos sound good - you should share the recipe.