Fox Glacier

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Having finished her university course, Rachael joined me in Christchurch and we travelled across to the West Coast on the TranzAlpine train. This is often named as one of the greatest rail journeys in the world, passing through the Southern Alps, a spectacular area of snow-capped mountains ond gorges.

At Greymouth we hired a car and drove to Fox Glacier where we booked ourselves on to a 'heli-hike'. This involved a trip by helicopter up the glacier and a guided walk on the icy surface. The glacier is constantly moving (this one advances about 2 metres every day) and the motion of the ice causes interesting natural features to appear and disappear, often within the space of a single day. These include crevasses (cracks in the ice that can be dangerously deep), ice caves and 'waves' (formed by the ice flowing like a river but much more slowly). The ice appears to be blue in areas where the fallen snow becomes compressed into ice, and small blue pools form in places where ice and snow melt. The sun was shining, it was surprisingly warm up there and the views of both the glacier and the surrounding mountains were stunning.

We explored the caves and crevasses and wandered around on this huge moving chunk of ice for about 3 hours until the helicopter returned and brought us back down to solid ground. It was an amazing experience and one of the highlights of the trip so far.

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