Franz Josef and Fox Glacier

Trip Start Jun 13, 2006
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Trip End Jun 12, 2007


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Monday, April 9, 2007

Alex: We got into Franz Josef and headed straight out to the glacier. The glacier sits at the end of a valley it has calved, and a sign marks the end of the glacier in 1720, about 2 km from the glacial face today. The valley is beautiful and the glacier is pretty spectacular but, in all honesty we were a little disappointed. It is a big glacier but titchy compared to the Moreno Glacier in Argentina and it doesn't have the beautiful colours of the Moreno. Maybe it was because it was an overcast day, either that or it is a problem with traveling - it raises the standards of what impresses you that bit too high. We did a few nice short walks, one to a view point, another to the face of the glacier and one to Peter's Pool which reflects the glacier beautifully. So all in all we had a really nice day.

The next day we headed to Fox Glacier 30km or so away. For some reason we preferred this glacier Fox 01
Fox 01
 . They are similar size but we could see the wonderful blues in this glacier. The valley was also very pretty, the cliff walls were huge and in places absolutely vertical, really spectacular. After a wander around and to the face of the glacier we headed to Lake Matheson.  On a clear day the lake reflects Mount Cook in the distance, but the New Zealand West coast is also known as the wet coast so, like most people I think, we didn't get a clear day but the walk and the lake we pretty anyway so we weren't disappointed. We killed the rest of the afternoon watching the first Lord of the Rings film, trying to spot places we had visited!

Our final day in Franz Josef was spent being rained on and just chilling out. We chose the right days for our glacier visits at least!
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