Franz Josef: Home to the steepest glacier at the moment!!

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Hellooooooo to all!! Im back AGAIN!!! You're all gonna get fed up of these pretty soon me thinks!! ha ha! Arrived in Franz Josef about 12ish so pretty early for once which was nice, im so fed up of the long journeys already!! i seem to spend the majority of my time on the bloody coach! lol! Oh well its nice to catch up on some sleep anyways-am trying to shake this stupid cold i seem to have had since ive been here, grrrr! We'd decided what with our tight schedule to only spend one night here so we could only do the half day hike but was a bit worried about my blistered feet so it was probably for the best!!

We all got kitted up with massive hiking boots and crampons (spikes to you and me, lol) and a waterproof coat!! But i wore my own, i mean-i didnt buy it for nothing did i? lol! It was probably the only chance im gonna get to the wear the bloomin thing! hee hee! Got on the little minibus with our guides and away we went!! somebody really should have told us just how far away the start of the glacier was from the carpark, we walked for over half an hour to get to the base at which point yep you guessed it my boots had started rubbing! (But this time in a different place!) And it was up and down cliff faces and very old and creaky looking ladders! You would have hated it Mum!! Some of the steps were HUGE, probably half my height so i was having to properly heave myself up them!! My thighs are STILL hurting!! :-(

But enough of the whinging, we got onto the glacier and it was AMAZING!!! Quite tough though, its one of the few glaciers in the world that is advancing at the moment which menas its extremely steep to climb!! You really had to put your faith in the spikes to keep you from sliding down the thing!! And we had to pull ourselves up on ropes!! But once up (obviously not to the top it would take a few days hike) it was pretty cool and the view was awesome!! the ice was still pretty muddy looking at this point-apparantly right at the top its blue! But was really surreal i kept imagaining id see things beneath the ice but its so solid!!! Have got some cool photos on here so take a look!! :-)

It was actually the coming down which was hardest!! You have to be really careful not to keep your feet too close together else you spikes will lock and your come crashing down and you have to keep your feet straight (rather than walking downhill on your side) its soooo much harder than you'd think-you naturally want to walk down sideways but our guide Boris (dont ask!!! She was actually female!) basically said if you slide like that you'll break your legs!! So yup i was pretty scared coming down!!!

We'd actually heard that day that one of the guides had fallen and broken his legs and loads of teams were up on the glacier trying to find him, oooo-er!! Nelly (bless her) got really confused-she couldnt understand why i was acting so calm when i told her......she thought id said id found two legs up on the glacier lol!!!!!!!

Love to everyone at home, keep in touch!! xxx

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Comments

[Trevor Jones]

Awesome pics
Awesome Pictures EMO!! Bet they don't come close to actually being there though!!!!