Day 42 Franz Josef Glacier

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Day 42 Franz Josef Glacier

Today we were booked to go on a half day trek onto the glacier. Once we had all our gear together, the tour company provided boots, coats and crampons our group and guide jumped onto the bus to take us to the valley floor.

After a 40 minute walk, some of it through rainforest we reached the foot of the glacier, we were then showed how to attach the crampons onto our boots before setting foot on the glacier. Our guide led the way cutting new steps as he walked to make it easier for us to climb the steep and slushy ice. We were to walk on the ice for about 2 hours, we could only see the first 5km of the glacier as it flowed down the lower part of the mountain. There was another ¾ of the glacier at the top of the mountain (about 2700metres) that we couldn't see.

Franz Josef glacier is 11km long and is only 240 metres above sea level, in fact this glacier used to stretch to the Tasman sea some 20km away! This fast moving glacier has been known to move up to 5 metres a day in the summer months but continues to snow at the top of the mountain all year round.

As we climbed on top of the glacier our guide filled in the small crevasses we were to walk over, we also walked through large crevasses which were just big slits in the ice. Rocks and stones could be found in the ice from the glacier collecting them as it moved down the mountain. Some parts of the ice looked blue due to the reflection and density of the ice, the ice was about 300 metres deep here.

We enjoyed the experience and it will probably the only time we will ever walk on a glacier, although we may have skied on one without knowing it! We were really lucky with the weather as it rains here most days (The rainfall in Franz Josef is approximately 5000mm a year) and we managed to complete the trek without any showers.

After returning to the village from our trek we set off south calling to see the next glacier down called Fox Glacier. We only stopped and took a picture as we thought it was enough to climb one glacier in a day! We arrived at Haast a small village about 150km from the glaciers to stay the night before continuing our journey tomorrow to Queenstown.

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