As we were in good time we drove up to the Glacier car park and walked up to the glacier face. It is an optical illusion as you think it is not far but it is actually 4kms from when you step out of the bush to the face (from where I’m pointing at the glacier in pic above.) There are some wonderful waterfalls along the way as you can also see from the pix. When we finally got to the face it was quite brethtaking. There was also a Kea wandering around checking for food leftovers. When we were last on South Island we hiked on Fox Glacier which is approx 20 miles south of here. It rained very heavily and we were both soaked to the skin. With this in mind I was wary that Mrs D would take some persuading to do Franz in the same conditions. There was the buzzing of choppers going in and out of the glacier valley and all in all it wasn’t a bad day. I suggested we see how the weather was the following day and take it from there.
After we got back from the glacier we had a lovely walk through the bush before dinner (and managed to get some free soup leftovers!!) Monday: cloudy and no buzzing of choppers going over. I went to the glacier hike office and there were no heli-hikes today (my preferred option) due to low cloud and they were expecting rain later. So I booked on the 1230 half day hike. Mrs D abstained for reasons detailed earlier. A bus took us to the car park and bush walk, we were a small group of 14. We had two guides as we were to be made into 2 smaller groups. Our guides were both from Cheshire in the UK and they even used to work at the same place. They had been out in NZ for 5 months and lovin’ it.
Now pay attention as this is to prove you can still learn and take in new knowlegde when given so by your guide – Franz Josef was first explored in 1865 by an Austrian explorer Julius Haast who named the glacier after the Austrian Emporer of the time. There are only 3 glaciers in the world that come down into rainforest and almost to the sea. Fox and Franz in NZ and another in Patagonia in South America. A cubic metre of blue glacier ice weighs one metric ton. It takes 5 years for snowfall at the top to become the blue ice we see at the bottom end of the glacier. On the west coast of the South Island they measure the rainfall in metres and not inches like they do in Christchurch. It rains 5 days out of 7 and they get 5 metres of rain a year in Franz Josef.
Enough of this educational stuff and on with the nonesense…. Yes it rained (as you can probably see fom the pix above.) It rained very heavy and I was once again soaked through. Mrs D was wise to abstain. Having said that I had a great day out with very informative guides and very adventurous routes over, down and through the glacier. It was a far better experience than the one we had on Fox. As always, had I done it the day before it would have been a drier experience. We all boarded the bus back, then a short walk back to the digs and dry gear. I was boring Mrs D to death with tales of rain and clambering about on ice on no time. After another round in the kitchen and more free soup, a good nites kip was had by all.
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