Fox Glacier

  Fox Glacier, South Island, New Zealand
Monday, December 29, 2008

None of us had seen a glacier. Let alone walked on one. Today we were going to walk on one of the most famous glaciers in New Zealand. The Fox Glacier.

Fox Glacier Panorama

Fox and Franz Lorenz Glaciers are the only two glaciers in New Zealand and the only glaciers in the world, along with some in Argentina and Chile, that are very near the sea and actually slide down into a rainforest. Fox moves approximately 45 cm a day. It is really very impressive to see its way  in between enormous green mountains. It works a bit like bulldozer, making its way through the valley dragging everything with it, rocks and rubble, in the process.
 
So we went to a chalet in the nearby town, got all geared up - really heavy boots with spikes underneath - and jumped on a bus that took us to the base of the glacier where we started our hike.

The group in Fox Glacier

The tour involved walking at the base of the glacier - going very near the glacier itself is really dangerous due to falling rocks, which is how some tourists lost their legs last year, but you can still some people going near it to touch it - and then climbing up 700 steps on a densely vegetated mountain next to the glacier. From there the view was truly breathtaking. We could see the whole glacier, which looks a bit like a ice cream at the top. Due to light refraction, the glacier is a bit blue at the top. Truly amazing view.
 
After about 2 hours walk, we finally reached the glacier. Walking on it was really fun.

The group on the glacier

The spikes under boots made it safe too. On the surface we found some mud that is normally sold as a beauty product due its exfoliating properties. It goes without saying that we put some on our cheeks which made us look very pretty for the rest of the hike. The glacier is like a huge, melting piece of ice, and we could often see holes in it with running water.
 
The glacier is 13 km long. Unfortunately due to the cloudiness we could only see about 3km. At some point though, the sun came out and the sky cleared. Then we could see the glacier all the way up to the snow-covered mountains in the distance.

Clearing sky over Fox Glacier

To other direction, we could see all the way to the Tasman Sea, which made the landscape very impressive and awe-inspiring.
 
The return was an easy hike down the same way that we came from, and when we made it back to the chalet in the afternoon we decided to pay a visit to the reflecting lake Matheson. Nikos and Thomas actually spent an hour walking around it and caught some striking snaps of the mountains and their reflection on the still, mirroring lake Matheson.

Matheson Lake

The view of the sun setting on top of the mountain range with the tall snow-covered mountain summits and the Fox glacier was also really beautiful.
 
We finished this wonderful day with a nice dinner in town and decided to park our campervan for the night in a scenic viewpoint close to the lake.