Franz Josef Glacier

Wow Wow Wow!


Well, we made it to the township of Franz Josef and stayed in this little rest area by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with the Franz Josef Glacier in front and the Fox Glacier in the back!


We signed up for the 3/4 day glacier walk and decided to clamber on Franz Josef rather than Fox. We were told that on Fox, you walk through a rainforest first and then onto the glacier, whereas with Franz, you are starting from the bottom after a bit of a trek and then go up. It sounded a bit harder and we thought it might make it more interesting, so we went with that.


Woke up in the morning to the most rainiest day ever! It had been raining lots these last days anyway and though it wasn't always raining heavily, it was pretty much constant and it was an a*se to get dry or warm. It was actually raining so hard and the weather was so miserable, we actually thought they would cancel our trip, but no such thing!


Got to the place and got handed our kit for the day, which consisted of heavy leather boots, waterproof jacket and trouser, gloves and hat. We were told to wear three to four layers of warm clothing ourselves, so Phil and I were all decked out in our Helly's, Buffalos and walking trousers, etc. The stuff they gave us was ok, not really all that waterproof to be honest, but the jacket was ok, which was the main thing.


We were also given a bum bag each, in which we were carrying our crampons for when we get on the ice. The boots were heave leather and a bit big, so I ended up wearing two pairs of NZ thickest woolly socks ever to pad it out. We were ready!


After a short bus ride, we got to the walking track, where we assembled and then began to walk. All through it was absolutely pouring it down - none of us could see a thing really and we were just miserably splashing through mud and crossing big streams by wading through the water. Needless to say, our feet were soaked before we even got close to the glacier!


The wool stuff also just soaks up the water and unfortunately it's almost impossible to get it dry or less horrible and itchy on your skin - ah well. Finally, we got near the glacier and it looks like a great big dirty avalanche just frozen as it was thundering down the mountain. As we got closer, we could see the mouth of a big cave with a river running out of it and everywhere you look, there's water water water and more water.


Got our crampons on, which was quite funny - they are a bit tricky to get on, but once we had them ready, we made our first steps onto the glacier. Let me tell you, it was pretty amazing!


The guides hack into the ice to form steps and so you climb these ice staircases, further and further up the glacier. Other times you just scramble up and hold onto some ropes and step around crevices. It was quite scary sometimes! We also squeezed through some narrow holes and balanced around a bit. All the time you can hear this sound as if someone is playing drums, but it's the water and bits of ice sloshing around underneath. It's very cool - pardon the pun.

By that time, it started to clear up a bit and all was very pretty with the sun shining on it. One girl didn't make it though, she had asthma and was starting to feel unwell, so the guide sent her down. I found it a bit hard, but it was mostly because I wasn't used to the crampons and the boots were so heavy! My legs were aching and all I wanted to do was take my shoes off! After a while though, it's fine, because you just get used to it.

I wasn't that impressed with our guide though. He went very fast and we lost sight of him several times on the glacier. One time we even began to go the wrong way, because we coudln't see where he had gone. Also when the girl with the asthma was struggling, he just told her to go down and shipped her off on these two other chaps who were going down as well. He didn't really encourage her or anything. I'm sure he didn't do an ML or he'd have know better.

It was a shame about the weather, otherwise I think the group may have been a bit perkier, but as it stood, some really found it hard and others I guess just wanted it to be over... shame really... it's not every day you get to climb onto a glacier!

Phil took lots of pictures - I'll upload them as soon as I get to it.

When we got down, we were happy and knackered! It was really good to do the trip and we enjoyed it in the end. Our thighs were really stiff though the next day!