Franz Josef Heli Hike

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I thought I would update the blog to let you know what I have done today so far. It really deserves it's own entry as it was pretty amazing.

We were wondering if we would even get a chance to go as the morning sky dive was off, we thought it might be the case with the heli hike as well, but nope, we got on the flight up to the glacier at 12pm. It is a pretty awesome flight on the helicopter around and back down the glacier and then landing on the ice where two Franz Josef guides waited for us. The whole operation is very smooth and very well run.

Our guide was Julia, she had been working as a guide for 4 years up ont he glacier. In the times between when she is not working she forms part of the mountain rescue team and also part fo a search and resuce team which recently helped retrieve survivors from the Christchurch earthquake.

We got our crampons on and then started walking up the glacier. At first it was pretty easy, but there were parts where Julia was using her ice axe to create steps for us to walk on. We were in a group of 7 people, Emily (from the States), a couple from Asutralia, another couple from Holland, Toby and myself and a couple of others.

Julia explained how the glacier had started recently receeding and the black hole - or the rock face right in front of us, had been growing larger and larger over the last couple of months. This was mainly down to the lack of snow on the upper part of the glacier itself.

All the time while walking we could hear cracks and creaks coming from the ice and hiher up in the glacier. It was obvious that the glacier is constantly ont he move and the terrain changes rapidly. Julia went on to explain that it moves about 4 metres a day and then at times she has to change her route from one trip to the next as it is not safe. We witnessed a massive ice fall, where boulders and ice the same size as a car came crashing down. it was pretty impressive stuff and Julia said that you only really get an icefall like that once a month so we were lucky to witness it.

Check out the photos, but really they don't do the glacier much justice to be honest....

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