We drove straight to our hostel at Fox Clacier, and soon realised that the town there wasn't very big. We unpacked our stuff, and then decided to drive to the Glacier to take a look.
We parked up and set about on a little walk. You can't drive up to the Glacier very close and it's a difficult hour walk to the glacier, so we only went as far as a look out. From there we could see Fox Glacier and the river running down from it. The river was grey from where it mixed with the grey crumbley rocks, and we could see huge ice boulders being carried along in it. The Glacier looked huge but we decided we would do a glacier climb and hike to get a better look.
The following day we drove to Franz Josef, to see the Franz Josef Glacier. After a lot of umming and arring over which walk we wanted to do we decided on the half day one. We dropped our stuff at the hostel we were going to stay at in Franz Josef before heading back to the tour centre.
To climb the Glacier we needed to borrow water proof coats, walking boots, crampons and woolly socks from the tour company. Then they drove us to the car park for the Franz Josef Glacier. Theresa was particularly worried about the long hour or so walk to the glacier, which we had been told would involve climbing cliffs with ladders, walking through streams and scrambling over boulders. Not her usual choice for spending a sunny afternoon.
So we set off towards the glacier in our little group of about 12 people. The first part of the walk was over rubble and although not that difficult was pretty tiring. Then we had to climb up a steep bank which ran along the side of the river, which then involved walking along a high narrow ledge (Theresa was not that keen), before descending down into some trees. From here we walked up a really difficult track (well difficult for us any way) over rocks and trees, til we came to a cliff with a waterfall, where we had to climb up the cliff on a couple of ladders and then walk along a series of steep narrow ledges before climbing down the cliff with a couple more ladders...great fun. Although we found it scary and knackering we weren't the slowest and we kept having to wait for an Indian couple who were on their honeymoon to catch us up. There were several points when it looked as though they would be turning back, but the guide talked them into continuing.
After crossing a couple of wide streams, and clambering over some more rocks and boulders we were finally at the Glacier face. We were already pretty much exhausted, but excited to finally have made it there. Here we put the crampons on the bottom of our boots so we could walk on the ice, and watched as some of the other guides recut some steps into the glacier face, so that we could climb up. The Glacier looked huge and the steps cut into the ice were really steep. It was really scary climbing up, sometimes there was a rope or a chain to hold, but often this grazed your knuckles against the ice.
When we started the climb all we could see was dirty ice, where it had mixed with the soil and rock, but as we went higher up we started to see more and more blue ice. Until we were quite far up and surrounded by walls of nice blue couloured ice and cravasses which we looked for ages down into. We also got a nice view down onto the rest of the valley!
We were pretty pleased with ourselves to have made it as high up as we had, and very glad we hadn't chosen to do the full day climb as we wouldn't have made it! At the top we stopped for a quick rest...no sitting down though as we would have gotten some wet icy bottoms!
The problem with the descent was that we knew exactly what lay ahead of us and how difficult the walk back was going to be. It was even more scary climbing down the glacier as we really had to rely on our crampons not to slip off and the climb back up and over all those ladders wasn't much better either. We were so glad to get back to our hostel and have a nice shower and lie down. Phew!
From Franz Josef we were going north the following day to Nelson, so we got a good rest for the long drive ahead. On the drive to Nelson we stopped off at Punakaiki to see the Pancake Rocks and blowholes, formed by the relentless waves from the Tasman srtait.
Love Theresa and Mark xxxx
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