Fox Glacier and Franz Josef Glacier

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Hi, decided to do a special blog for the Glaciers as so many pictures and an amazing experience!


Arrived here at Fox on a Wednesday afternoon with the sun shining after a wet drive from Greymouth! Found a little campsite right in the heart of the township, close to everything, not that there is a lot to be close to!


Several cafes/bars , helicopter bookings, petrol station, general store and an internet cafe! But very nice and quiet with the picturesque mountains behind.


IOn the way here in the morning I had to pass through Franz Josef and so stopped at the Glacier car park, to do the hour and a half walk to the Glacier terminal face.

Quite weird as you walk through some rainforest then walk up the river bed to the glacier face following yellow markers.
Amazing views walking there plus the glacier face, difficult to imagine its size from the pictures.


The Glacier is in retreat now, though in 1985 was actually still advancing, but has retreated a long way since the 1800's, they even have a sign on the road to the car park to show where the glacier was in 1750.


I had seen all the helicopter rides and different hikes you could do on the glaciers and decided i had to do one of them. There were various length helicopter flights, half day and full day walks and on a selection on both glaciers.


One caught my eye which was a Heli-hike, where you get flown to the glacier, have a 2 and half hour hike then helicopter back again. Also decided on Fox as read gets busier at Franz as larger town.


Anyway decided that was the one, expensive, but got to go in helicopter which never done before, see the glacier from above plus get to hike around it, so booked it (395 bananas).


Chilled in the camper van for the night then up early to walk across the road to the tour centre, it was a beautiful blue sky day. Including the guide there were twelve of us on the trip, we were bussed ten minutes to the heliport and given our leather boots and warm socks, crumbs one girl had size ten feet!


Right first some facts!


Fox Glacier is 13km long, the longest on the West Coast of New Zealand (New Zealand has over 3000 glaciers!) surrounded by over 3000m high mountains including Mount Cook and Mt Tasman.


The nearbye Franz Josef Glacier is around 12km long and has a steeper valley incline than Fox, but both similar looking valley glaciers. The two glaciers share a large snow neve (place where the snow gathers) which is over 30 square km.


This neve basin is where high snowfalls are experienced due to the high levels of rain created from warm air currents from Australia. Here the mountains turn the rain to snow which falls and collects in the neve and over time and pressure turn to ice.


Then with the steepness of the valleys and the high pessures from the neve the glacier ice move down the mountain. These two actually move 7 metres / year which is ten times the speed of similar glaciers, due to the high snowfall and steepness.


The glaciers are also more accessible than others around the world in that their terminal faces are less than 300m below sea level. Most of us have experienced glaciers when we have been high in the mountains skiing, sorry snow riding!


The helicopter arrived to take us to the glacier, he was going to take us in two loads, I was in the first one. It flew up both sides of the glacier valley and above so we could get some good views and photos, then swang around so we could look into the waterfall at the glacier side.


Then landed at least halfway up th glacier to drop us off. We waited for the second load to come, it was quite cold as the clouds had started to form already!


We were given some crampons to fit to our boots so we could grip and walk across the ice. They were still quite awkward to walk in, imagine easy to twist an ankle!


The guide told us some facts about the glacier then walked us around the glacier for about two and a half hours. Looking at various chasms and caves created by the moving ice and the thawing from sun and rain, some great photo opportunities.


Once we had been walking around, I saya round as we stayed on the glacier which is only a 1 km wide, returning back to the place the helicopter dropped us off.
The helicopter flew in dropping off the next tour and picking up the first load from our group, then returning for us. The helicopter ride seemd slower in the cabin then outside, and did not seem to be much holding us up! and very agile.


It was an amazing experience and I was glad i had done the heli-hike.
Following morning i walked around Lake Matheson with some amazing views and reflections of the mountains in the lake, see main blog. Also walked to the Fox Glacier face, about an hour walk from the carpark, included those photos here it was amazing again.


Uh oh rain back again in the time taken to write this! Seems to be the pattern here in Fox, sunny in the morning, clouds over then rains evening.


Bye for now
Larf

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Photos

Franz Josef Glacier
The approach on the walk

Comments

[lee gibbs]

snow riding!!!!! love it.

[F. E]

Wow
these are amazing pictures, thank you for share these beautiful sites of our beautiful Country