One Seriously Icy Hike

Wow, hiking the Franz Josef Glacier is one of the most amazing things I have ever done. For real.  To have the chance to walk for 5 hours on top of a glacier of blue ice is out of this world. And that's what we did, all day, on Monday Feb 2nd.  Groundhog day!

We made sure to book ourselves into a guided full-day hike on one of the only 3 temperate glaciers in the world - the Franz Josef glacier in the south island of New Zealand.  The other two is the Fox Glacier - right next door that shares the same summit, and another in Chile.  So obviously, quite the unique NZ experience.  We chose to go with Franz Josef Glacier Guides who have been in operation for many years, and have the guiding down to a science. They put 300 people on the glacier each day!

It was a good one hour hike to the base of the glacier.  The glacier plunges from 2700m to only 300m above sea level - which means it is low enough for the public to access it.

We were told that a glacier is a slow moving body of ice drawn by gravity down a valley.  The glacier is fed at the head (or neve) by heaps of snow that compact and partially melt into white ice.  After several years as water seeps in and air is expelled the granules merge together forming bluish glacial ice.  It is this same ice that forms crevasses and tunnels as it continues to move down the valley, and allowed us to venture on top of it. 

One Maori guide informed us of the Maori legend of the glacier - the glaciers are formed from the frozen tears of the mythological goddess Hinemoa whose lover fell to his death while they were climbing together in the mountains.

For us, it meant an amazing hike up steep ice faces, with the help of trusty cramp-ons (spikes attached to our boots) and steps cut into the ice by our guides.

We came across ice tunnels, deep crevasses that seemed to fall forever, and ice walls as far as the eye could see.  Syd especially liked the crevasses that we got to squeeze into.

We all had on rain jackets to keep off the wet ice chill, but other than that, it was quite temperate up there, and many wore shorts!

At one point in our trip our guide, and the one in front of us were cutting a new path, so we got to see them create steps, and bridge crevasses, all for our safety.  This made the trip seem much more rustic and un-planned than Syd & I expected, and actually made us appreciate it much more. 

We were a little behind schedule and had to truck it back down on the descent, but we couldn't believe how high we had climbed. 

What an amazing day. I highly recommend this to anyone who visits New Zealand - not to miss this phenomenon.