On the WET West coast helihiking up glaciers

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The last night that I had in Queenstown turned out to be a great evening, although I got quite drunk and didn’t go to bed till 5.30am, which consequently gave me 1.5 hours of sleep before I had to get up again, pack my bags and head of to the bus station to catch the bus up the West coast to Fox Glacier.
I woke up feeling so rough and wished straight away that I had gone to bed earlier - but what the hell I’m travelling!!! So I just jumped on the bus and slept for the first few hours. I luckily woke up just before we went through this beautiful area, which is called the Haast pass. The Haast pass is an incredibly scenic drive through the Southern Alps where the road winds its way through all these huge mountains on either side. The road followed rivers, passed waterfalls and fast flowing rapids which were this lovely light turquoise colour. As we drove through towards the West Coast and started to head north, we found ourselves in the middle of deep rainforest, with all the trees being so much bigger and everything showing these fabulous shades of deep dark green. The difference from only 2 hours before was amazing, everything seemed so remote and untouched, all the vegetation around here was so green and lush, which I think was helped due to all the rain!

We finally arrived at Fox Glacier at 16.30 and just like the entire journey up from Queenstown, it was still raining so just ended up sat in the hostel for the rest of the evening chatting to other travelers, as there was no option of going out, as the town was so tiny.

The next day I woke up bright and early ready to head off out and explore this great Glacier but surprise, surprise in was still raining!! Well this area is sandwiched on a narrow band of land between the sea and the mountain range to our east, so as the whole area takes the brunt of the Antarctic winds and weather from the south, the cloud hits the mountains and forced up and so pisses down with rain. The annual rainfall is between 5-7 METERS a year!!! Here on the West coast there are 2 main Glacier know as Fox and Franz Josef, these are very famous as nowhere else in the world do glaciers appear at this latitude and appear this close to the sea. This is due mainly to this huge amount of rain, which obliviously turns to snows at the higher altitudes that falls up on the mountains and then compacts and pushes the glacier down the valley.

Well all morning I waited for it to clear but it didn’t stop, so eventually me and a mate named Avi (my roommate) decided to take a trip up to the front face of the glacier anyway! We heading up the valley and seen the front (terminal) face of this massive glacier, which was very impressive. I Have never seen such a big lump of ice before!! Unfortunately we weren’t allowed any closer than 80 meters due to falling blocks of ice etc.

As you can see from the pic it was very cloudy but all the same Avi and I headed up the mountain and went for a 1.5 walk through the dense vegetation to a lookout point that was meant to give a great view back up and over the valley and through the valley, but it was so cloudy and wet that we could hardly see the trees at the lookout let alone any glacier!!

The following day I booked myself on a bus to take me the 23kms north to see the bigger and more popular Franz Josef glacier. There are a number of walking tours on the glacier that take you up on to the ice, over crevasses and into ice caves. There were many options from half day to full day walks, as well as helicopter trips and helihikes. They were all so expensive but I thought that I may never get the opportunity to climb up on a glacier again so I opted for the Helihike. A Helihike basically mean that a small group of 5-6 people are taken half way up onto the I glacier then dropped off to hike around this huge lump of ice for a few hours before being picked back up and then flown back into town. I Also thought that the other great advantage to getting the helicopter up on to the glacier would be that I would have the most amazing view of the glacier, the Southern Alps and even on clear day I might see Mt Cook.

I booked myself on the helihike that afternoon as it was beautifully sunny that morning but as the day progressed the weather deteriorated and after waiting there quite a time it was finally cancelled as they couldn’t see the marked out landing place on the ice!

So instead I thought I would occupy myself with a quick 6km walk to the front (terminal) face of the Franz Josef glacier. The weather was still cloudy up the top of the mountains but was pretty good for being able to see the glacier, which was massive, even bigger than Fox. I couldn’t believe that a massive block of ice could 1. Not melt in this type of temperate climate and 2. Cut though and force its way though massive mountains such as the ones on either side of where I was stood. Nature is so incredible at times!

I walked around a few look out points before making my way back to the town, but walking along the road was pretty boring, so decided to take this small track instead that took me though a dense rainforest. It was said to take around 2 hours and 40 mins and was pretty rough and tough. Well that was a large understatement! At times there was no path to follow, I had to cross rivers, small waterfalls, climb around or over fallen trees, stone jump across huge mud pools and climb over massive rocks and boulders that had been brought down by the glacier thousands of years ago!! It was an incredibly hard walk and physically tiring but I had so much fun, it was one of the best walks that I have ever done, but I really regretted not wearing proper hiking boots, as I had just come out in my trainers and I was jumping from mossy covered stone to mossy covered to stone all the time and they were very slippery. I don’t know how I didn’t hurt my ankle! For the whole 2.5 hours it didn’t see another person and it felt like I was trekking though uncharted rainforest all by myself with only my Ipod as company lol!

Luckily by the time I actually got back to the hostel I was just in time for some free soup, which was much needed after walking constantly for 4.5 hours, being soaking wet and covered in mud!

I had rebooked my helicopter hike for the early the following day, but yet again, it got cancelled and pushed back till lunchtime due to bad weather again, and that in turn then got pushed back to the afternoon!! Well finally at another hours wait we finally got the ‘go-head’ to board the helicopters that would take us up on the Glacier.

Unfortunately it was still quite cloudy so we were unable to see over the Southern Alps but we could still see up and along the glacier and the valley that the glacier as forged over its lifetime. It was only a quick 10 min flight to the ice landing place, where they dropped us out and we set about attaching to spiking crampons onto our boots so we didn’t slip and slid all over the place.
We spent 2 hours hiking all over this area of the glacier, it was to rugged and uneven and was more like compressed icy snow than hard solid ice you get out of the freezer, although there were some areas like that!!! We climbed though some really steep areas, through small canyons and seen many small ponds, streams running on top and though the ice. We had to be very careful as the glacier is constantly moving down the valley so everyday it changes and some section hide dangerous areas that have been melted away and then covered with powder snow. Also you had to be very careful of avalanches, which we were lucky enough to witness 2 off, they were only small but still avalanches!

The best bit was at the end when we were able to climb through a proper blue ice cave, this was very slippery but had the most amazing blue colour, as you can see from the pictures.

We were lucky as the time went by the weather started to clear and by the end of the 2 hours we could actually start seeing up the glacier and even blue sky started to appear, which was really nice.

Being in this part of New Zealand was something I was really looking forward to, the Glaciers were a big appeal to me and seeing them and being able to hike around on them was amazing. The whole West coast was beautiful, it was so untouched and remote (only 1% of the population live here), I can imagine seeing the glacier on a lovely clear day would have been incredible but due to all the rain here, it doesn’t happen very much especially at this time of the year.

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Photos

Our transport
getting dropped of on the ice

Franz Josef Glacier
Image showing where the glacier used to be over the years

How massive is that lump of ice?
The glacier from the helicopter

Thats my hostel
great view from the moment you walk out the door