Glacier

I am so exhausted. I also think my legs may be about to fall off. More on that in a moment.

The moment I finished updating the blog yesterday, a piercing siren rent the otherwise tranquil air of Franz Josef. We freaked, neither of us had a clue what it was about and started having visions of earthquakes. In looking about, we saw people running up the hill. We decided the safest place to be (later checked and recommended by the authorities on the web) was the car. Luckily, in this situation, the siren was just calling the firemen to the truck. We have since researched what to do in every possible emergency situation - namely earthquakes as NZ has small, 'unnoticable by human' ones every single day which often get big.

We went on to Fox Glacier village and Lake Matheson where we stayed the night. An iconic lake, nearly every NZ photo book or calender has a picture of this lake reflecting Mt Cook and Mt Tasman. We walked through the rainforest at twilight, looking for the perfect spot to take our own pictures. It was cool and mostly clear and so beautiful. Absolutely breathtaking.

We also bumped into (finally!) another Spaceship in the carpark! Yay! We got to swap our DVDs and meet a random Swiss dude who didn't fully understand what we were on about most of the time.


We started today bright and early, we had an appointment booked. We were going onto Fox Glacier! We arrived and got suited and booted, with massive heavy leather hiking boots and loads of layers. We were carted up the 6km track to the terminal face (the snout) of the glacier. From there, it was all on foot.

We had to hike along the valley, viewing ridiculously gigantic landslides and rockfalls as we went. Our informative guides kept up the banter, explaining the vivid blue colour of the pools nearby as due to the mica suspended in the water. Such a clear, intense blue. We reached near to the edge (about 300m away due to severe danger of being anywhere closer) and steered ourselves away from the freezing cold hunk of ice and into, get this - sub-temperate tropical rainforest. Bizarre. Warm, verdantly green, ferns and mosses, waterfalls of pure snow melt which we drank from - it was lovely. Except for all the stairs. Cut into the mountain, they were built to the size of the guide who makes them. We met one of them, working away. He was 6''7. That is a whole 12 inches taller than me. These steps were massive! There were so many of them! We trudged, up through the rainforest, melting gently in all our layers. We went through no-stop zones where landslides were so frequent, we had to be spotted across. After so many stairs, we reached the ice of the glacier's surface.

The glacier itself was gargantuan and really hard to judge scale on. It involved swoops and spike of dirty white ice, all glowing eerily blue from deep within. The striations on the surface were grey and red - grey from the 'rock flour' of grinded rocks and red from Uluru in Oz! Incomprehensibly large. We all strapped our crampons onto our feet (I managed to do so in a way which our guide had only seen once before and she thought it was hilarious that I essentially reversed her instructions on how to do them. Doh.) and picked up our 'alpenstock' (read: mountain stick) then we set off. More steps ensued. In order to get about, the guides are equipped with pick axe with which they hack away at the ice, creating steps which can be climbed.

The glacier is not smooth. No Fox's Glacier Mint this, instead, picture cravasses, deep holes, hills and valleys, swoops and dives. All covered with fingernail sized chunks of ice, glowing faintly blue. It is like walking on a very large, very solid, blue Slush Puppy drink. We tramped about, up the glacier, down the glacier. Near its snout we explored caves of blue ice and walked along a cravasse. Waterfalls and rivers swooshed along nearby as we literally made our own path across the surface. It is certainly a unique environment! Being in a deep ice cave is like standing within blue Turkish Delight. The walls are smooth to look at, yet you can peel huge translucent crystals off the walls with your fingers. They look like waves, sculpted from ice. It was amazing.

We spent 4 hours hiking about on the ice, after our 1 hour hike up the mountain. Of course, we had to hike down too, and by the end of that walk, everybodies legs were shaking. I have personally never been so happy to see bus seats. So much effort goes into it, it is so much harder than we were prepared to deal with, yet so worth it.

We had a pizza back at Fox Glacier village, now we are heading back to the Lake to get an early night. Exhausted! There is going to be pain in the muscles tomorrow, but such is life.