There is NO snow on a glacier...

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  Fox Glacier, South Island, New Zealand
Monday, March 30, 2009

Upon arriving in Fox Glacier we were greeted by low hanging black clouds... Which was not a good sign as the purpose of our visit here was to do something called a 'heli-hike'...

A heli-hike is, as the name might give away, a combination of a helicopter flight and a hike. In our case the helicopter bit was to get onto the glacier at Fox Glacier (boy what an original name for a town, isn't it? ;)). And after that the hike-bit is wandering around on top of the glacier to just experience what it is like and see all the cool features. Oh, and the guides of course give a bit of information and history as well.

So anyway, because of the helicopter part of it all, these tours are highly weather dependent and the conditions at our arrival did not bode well for this. Luckily the weather follows a rather predictable pattern in Fox Glacier most of the time

01 - *Hums The Airwolf Tune*

. Bright clear skies in the morning and shortly after noon it starts clouding over and remains that way for the rest of the day.

Having found this information out at the heli-hike offices, we relaxed and went out for dinner. The dinner itself wasn't particularly exciting, but we want to mention it because of what happened afterwards. We finished our meal and as we were paying the waitresses were curious where we were from and suddenly asked if we were going to watch the sheep-shearing competition in the pub across the street.
This confused and startled us a bit, but as we found out later (when yet MORE people asked us the same) this is a major entertainment feature in Fox Glacier. The fact that the next day people asked us if we SAW the sheep-shearing competition indicated that the entire village must have come out for this event of epic proportions! And NO! We didn't go :P

The heli-hike the next morning was quite the experience as neither of us had ever been in a helicopter before. Even Martijn enjoyed it tremendously and both of us wished the helicopter bit would have lasted longer. It also allowed for several misconceptions about helicopters to be dispelled as the take-off and landing were so smooth that we barely realised that it had happened

02 - Yes, We Look Ridiculous

. What IS true is that it is very windy outside the helicopter when they take off. That means when you're on a glacier next to a helicopter that is taking off, you should shield yourself from the small ice-bits that will come flying towards you! DUCK!

The hiking on the glacier was simplified a little bit for us by giving us proper boots and spikes to tie under the boots. This allowed for far better grip on the ice than our sneakers would ever have given! But Martijn was still so unstable on his feet that he spent most of the time looking down and walking with fairly wobbly legs. Trude was a lot more at ease here of course, probably because of having lived in northern Norway for a few years.
Because of this Martijn feels that Trude hugely outshines him in the pictures she managed to take as she actually COULD spend more time looking around :P (Trude disagrees of course ;))

The fact that we were on the glacier late in the season meant that much of the ice had started compacting and the larger caverns in the ice were either gone or inaccessable.

Also black bits were showing up more on the ice, which we were told was NOT pollution, but the little rocks and pebbles and dust that the glacier was dragging along with it.
Despite these two facts we still saw lots of very cool (heheheh) features and AMAZINGLY blue ice everywhere.

After our two-and-a-half hour walk on the glacier we were both quite warm, not just from the effort involved, but also because the sun had been shining quite fiercely onto the glacier and the ice nicely reflects that.
Martijn boarded the helicopter back in his t-shirt and Trude gladly removed one of her sweaters. (Leaving her with just 1 sweater :P)

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

03 - Big Enough To Crawl Through	04 - Which Animal Left THIS Pawprint?	05 - Our Intrepid... Erm... Tour Guide...	06 - Luckily Nobody Fell In
07 - A Natural Ice Cavern	08 - Nice Shoes Eh ;)	09 - The Earth Opening Up	10 - A Little Slice Of Home?
11 - It LOOKS Cozy...	12 - Anybody Home?	13 - The Source Of Our Glacier

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