Flying over the Glacier
Trip Start
Jul 12, 2006
1
88
230
Trip End
Jun 18, 2007
Franz Joseph, New Zealand
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
It didn't take long to check in and pay for the flight and within 10 minutes of so we were following some chirpy German bloke with shorts on and a pick axe in his hand. He led myself and Lee plus 4 others outside towards the helipad, when he stopped in front of a sign showing 4 pictures. "you understand this" he commanded more than asked pointing profusly to the pictures explaining each on in about 3 words. "No hats... no helicopter behind... no hands up... no helicopter infront"... "You understand?" he asked? Basically what he was trying to explain was that the helicopter rotors were moving therefore, in order to avoid serious inury or even death, do not have any loose articles, including hats, on, do not approach the helicopter from the front or the back, always from the side and do not raise your hands anywhere near the rotors at all otherwise limbs will be lost. The pictures were far more funny, little cartoon men losing their limbs with big teardrops everywhere, although it was meant to be blood, not just someone crying because they're dead.
Anyway, we all understoood, well Lee and I did but we laid a bet that the foreign guy behind us hadn't understood a single word and wouldn't remove his had. He hadn't and he didn't so the German guide shouted at him.
There was four of us in the helicopter plus the pilot (always worth having the pilot if you ask me). Being the smallest I got to sit right in the front next to Mr Pilot. Brilliant! We donned our headphones and set off towards the glacier. It didn't take long to see it at all, but then when you're flying towards a great big glacier stuck between two sides of a mountain it's pretty hard to miss it. From afar the glacier does really just look like a huge great piece of dirty ice. It's only when you start getting up close to it, or as close as you can get in a helicopter!, that you start to appreciate just how blooming huge it really is, it's width, length, depth and just the sheer amount of ice it holds. No wonder it creates such stunning valleys, sorry Fjords.
We hovered above it then following it right up to the top. As we went up you could see the ice change colour and you could see all the different formations. The higher we went the bluier the ice got until we were right at the top where the ice was covered in a layer of the whitest, fresh snow ever. We had a brief landing on Franz Joseph to drop the German shouty guide off with his ice pick and then took off again, this time flying across to Fox Glacier. As we flew we passed near Mt Cook and the other Mt that's just in front of it but I've forgotten the name off. As we flew the landscape below us looked like a magical wonderland. There was a blanket of fresh snow that just needed a big cherry in it to finsih it off, a stark contrast against the bright blue sky with the sun just highlighting it all perfectly. It's how I imagine heaven's ski field might look like. As we flew towards Fox the tops of the mountains could be seen peaking out from the fresh coating of snow. It was flippin marvellous. I've never seen anything like it before. You could make out the ice walls and carvings some of the hiking companies had made.
As we got closer to Fox we started to decend and landed slap bang in the middle of fresh snow, right at the very top of the glacier. There were three other helicopters already there, one of them had kindly placed a couple of sticks in the ground for a makeshift runway so the other helicopters could land.
It was awesome. The feeling of getting out of the helicopter onto fresh, unspoilt snow then running through it, feet inches deep and disappearing, making marks in the snow where no one else in the world has been, on top of a glacier, was pretty awesome too. The beauty of the scenery was amazing, I was speechless, how do you describe perfection? It was an untouched beauty, very fresh, very natural. It was hard to stand there and not be touched by how fantastic it all was. Standing in the snow, looking more like icing on a big cake than anything else, seeing all the peaks poking out here and there, the sun, and just a handful of humans. It's such a shame that we're messing the planet up so much, if only everyone could see for themselves what places like this are like then I'm sure that we'd all do much much more to try and make things better. I'm sure I probably sound like some half baked hippy or tree-hugger but with places like this in the world it really does give you some motivation. (We'll ignore the fact there were 3 helicopters up there, whose fuel burning probably doesn't help! doh!).
We had a 10 minute landing on Fox glacier before heading back to the helicopter (not before our pilot had tried to sell us the obligatory $20 souviner photo he could take), hmmmm digital camera in hand or $20 for the same photo just in a cardboard envelope with a photo of the helicopter on it?.... tough choice but I declined then got the pilot to take a photo of me and Lee.... (just kidding)
It didn't take too long to get back down to the ground, but not before doing a circle above Fox and then flying over Franz Joseph again. We took tons of photos, probably more than needed and I'll get some up here soon as I promise.
After our flight the first thing I thought was, we've got to get up there and hike it. So as soon as we landed I headed straight for the desk to book. Unfortunately the company weren't running the full day hikes because the rain had washed out their tracks. We were so gutted, everyone had said don't do the half day hike because it's not worth it but they couldn't promise they would be doing thef ull day one tomorrow either. We really didn't know what to do, so headed back to the hostel, head in hands kind of thing. Luckily, when we went to book our room for an extra night the lady at reception pointed us in the direction of another company that they use. We headed straight back into town (FJ isn't very big at all, heading back into town mean walking up the road and turning left!) to speak with the company. I didn't know whether to be concerned that one company wasn't goign because of the weather yet the other one was, I didn't know which was right. ANyway, they seemed to be on the ball, we read all the waivers - basically saying that if you were unfit and couldn't hack it then you'd be evacuated from the glacier at your own expense and that they operated everyday of the year regardless of weather (but provided rain jackects, oh goody!). So we thought about it for about 2 minutes then booked for the full day hike.
We headed straight to the supermarket to get some fodder for packed lunches then headed back to our little room to compile said packed lunches and work out what we were going to take etc.... We headed to the lounge area and played a couple of games of pool before heading back to our room for some wine and a lovely evening playing scrabble and an early night in prep for tomorrow. But, just as we were settling into things our peace was disturbed by 3 Koreans coming to share our dorm with us - bum!
I did try not to look disappointed that they'd intruded but I don't think it worked. Still they said hello, dumped their stuff, probably said something nasty about all our stuff being over the room, then departed to have a look around. Lee and I were a bit gutted really because the lady had promised to keep people out of our room if she could and we were worried that a bigger group would come in but you pay the cheap price you take the risk.
I was going to cook a lovely stew in the room so we could have a cosy night in but I couldnt' do it now because if they see us cooking int he room then they'll want to as well so we upped sticks and transferred to the kitchen and TV room, hopefully setting a good example.
Luckily, they followed suit. Lee and I munched our dinner whilst watching TV, drinking wine and playing scrabble in the TV room. We decided to give our room mates some space, so filled our glasses full of wine and then headed a short walk out of town, torches in hand, to do the glow worm track. It was a 15 minute walk to an outlet into the river and en route was the most amout of glow worms we've ever seen. There was one point that just looked like a star curtian becuase there were so many. We'd drunk a fair bit of wine by now, so lee came up with the idea to catch a moth and feed it to the glow worms. He'd seen the video at the glow worm caves in Te Anau and was impressed by how territorial they are and how violent they are, so there we were, pitch black, on some random walk. We had no idea where we were going, but we were there, torches in hand trying to catch a moth to feed the glow worms. We succedded, Lee's mispent youth I blame, but he caught a moth and on the way back tried to feed it too a glow worm, who wasn't really having any of it. I did try and explain that he video was probably speeded up but he was still dissappoined. I was dreading going back to the room and finding a party or something happening but luckily they were all early-to-bed people so lights were out at 10pm
