Franz Joseph Glacier

We were told to make a 9:15 arrival at the Franz Josef Glacier Guides office for our 9:30 start, but frankly it wasn't clear what the extra 15 minutes was allocated for. The office was chaos and we waited around for a while before being collected up with 8 others to be herded across the street to be outfitted with boots and snow pants for the hike.

The people were very friendly and helpful and the equipment seemed to be in decent shape. We then waited around for a while longer until collected up to head to the helipad which is a few short steps off the main street. We then waited at the helipad for the helicopter to come to ferry us to the glacier. In all it was almost 10:20 by the time we were in the air. Despite all the delays, though, in addition to the helicopter rides the hike went on for a good 2 1/2 hours so we were not in any way disappointed with the excursion or the folks at Franz Josef Glacier Guides.



The helicopter pilot took us swiftly up the river (which is mostly melt water from the glacier) toward the face of the glacier.




The glacier looks very much like a river that has been flash frozen as it flows down between the mountains.


This is what they call the face of the glacier with the river flowing out of the base. The water is grey and silty due to the ground up rock that the glacier generates as it is forced down the mountainside. According to our guide the glacier moves 3 to 5 metres down the mountain each day, but because 2-6 metres of the glacier melt away each day there is little net movement of the face down the valley.



You can see by the shape of the deep crevasses that there are tremendous stresses on the ice as it is drawn and pushed down between the mountain walls.


The pilot flew close to the ice as the helicopter climbed rapidly up the glacier face. We were close but not that close - those spires of ice are huge.



That is a mini-glacier off in the distance pushing out between the rocks to add its ice to that of Frans Joseph.

The blue colour is not artificial. That's what the ice really looks like.

Debbie sat in the front with me in the back row of seats. Here is the view out the front as we rapidly approached the glacier (at over 200 kph - I checked on the GPS later).


This is the ice topology on the way up to the more level area we hiked on. One would definitely not want to hike through that!


And finally a view of the mountains near the summit which we flew over before heading back down to the hiking area.


The 10 of us in the hiking group were ferried up in two groups of 5. This is the first group of 5 waiting for us to arrive.


Once we had been deposited on the ice the helicopter took off to run other errands while we tramped around.






We were fitted with crampons (sharp ice treads for walking on ice) before heading off.



I ended up near the back as I was always stopping to take pictures. The guide, AJ (he's the one in shorts), called us Team Canada and often called back to encourage us to keep up.




Here is a shot showing a different hiking group somewhat up the hill from us just to give you some idea of the scale of the place.


The sun and melting water form a lot of these deep cuts and holes that you have to keep an eye out for to avoid stepping into them.


Here we are once again falling behind.


AJ led us up the hill as he searched for some larger ice caves.



We passed many smaller caves which make for some nice photographs.




We found one largish cave but it was deemed too unstable to enter so we just got as close as we could to see inside.



There is a streak of dirty ice covered with rocks and gravel running down the centre of the glacier. Apparently this is what was left behind after torrential rainstorms in early January created a massive river that ran over the glacier.



A couple of other groups, now.


Debbie, completely unafraid of slipping on the ice.


A shot looking up the hill toward one edge.


We eventually found a cave big enough and safe enough to walk through.


We hiked from there back to the rendezvous spot where the helicopter left us passing lots of interesting ice structures along the way.


While waiting for the helicopter to return after picking up the first 5 of our group we took a few (dozen) pictures. I will only fill this space with a judicious sampling of them, though.






As we waited in the bright sunshine on the glacier we could see the cloud cover moving in from town toward us. As we flew down the valley ...




... the cloud thickened and it began to rain.

The pilot approached the helipad with an acrobatic, stomach testing finish but landed us safely back in Franz Joseph. We returned our gear to the Glacier Guides and headed off for lunch.



We had a few hours remaining to kill after lunch so decided to head off to the glacier wall by car to hike around the river. The road ends a few km from the glacier itself at a large carpark. The main hike to the glacier wall itself was closed due to the rain which apparently causes the river to behave unpredictably. We thus chose a couple of the shorter hikes which end in scenic viewpoints. Because it was raining pretty heavily when we set out, I left the camera behind so even though the rain let up shortly thereafter, we have nothing to show except the memories.

Upon our return to the carpark we noticed a large bird screaming loudly at passers by. A woman walking by told us it was a Kea, and described them as "Cheeky Buggers" since they are quite bold and will steal and/or damage shoes and other small belongings.


We headed back to town and had a better dinner at the same restaurant before returning to our motel room for some TV and sleep.

Next: A rainy drive to Nelson.

Until then ...

Don