Franz Josef glacier walk
After experiencing an amazing half-day walk over the Athabasca glacier in Canada, I wasn't sure whether to spare the funds to do another glacier walk, this time in New Zealand at Franz Josef. But the more I heard about it I realised just how different it was to the Canadian glacier.
The Franz Josef glacier is far more rugged in comparison and the face of the glacier rises steeply. This meant that the true difference would be the experience, as instead of merely walking on the ice, we would be in-amongst it, walking through narrow passages and crevices - getting wet and cold in the process!!
With other members of the New Zealand tour we decided to do the full-day hike on the ice, a crazy 8 hours, great fun though!!
To begin the ice walk (or climb!) we had to use special crampons attached to our hiking boots. We began the hike by tackling the steep face of the glacier, ascending a flight of ice steps, which are hacked out by a dedicated team each morning. They also check or create bridges across deadly, steep crevices, but these are more like ladders with a wooden plank in the middle! Not very reassuring!!
We spent much of the day just looking at ice, sunglasses were a must and some of the scenery was amazing.
We were handed some ice-axes when the going got tough, this was probably the best part of it as the whole glacier then turned into a massive playground!! We had competitions to see how could hack the most ice (Manu, Adam and me pictured below - enjoying our new game)!!
But it went too far in the end as we wasted a lot of energy, the glacier probably receeded far more that day than the previous year, and as we began to spray each other with ice, we started to get cold!! It wasn't so funny anymore!!
I had to take my SLR camera with me on the hike which was tricky but got some great photos on the way back down when the weather began to get overcast. The camera survived luckily. As for me, I got mild frostbite on my tongue, knew I shouldn't have licked the ice and got an ice burn in the process dammit!!!
A great day.
The Franz Josef glacier is far more rugged in comparison and the face of the glacier rises steeply. This meant that the true difference would be the experience, as instead of merely walking on the ice, we would be in-amongst it, walking through narrow passages and crevices - getting wet and cold in the process!!
With other members of the New Zealand tour we decided to do the full-day hike on the ice, a crazy 8 hours, great fun though!!
To begin the ice walk (or climb!) we had to use special crampons attached to our hiking boots. We began the hike by tackling the steep face of the glacier, ascending a flight of ice steps, which are hacked out by a dedicated team each morning. They also check or create bridges across deadly, steep crevices, but these are more like ladders with a wooden plank in the middle! Not very reassuring!!
We spent much of the day just looking at ice, sunglasses were a must and some of the scenery was amazing.
We were handed some ice-axes when the going got tough, this was probably the best part of it as the whole glacier then turned into a massive playground!! We had competitions to see how could hack the most ice (Manu, Adam and me pictured below - enjoying our new game)!!
But it went too far in the end as we wasted a lot of energy, the glacier probably receeded far more that day than the previous year, and as we began to spray each other with ice, we started to get cold!! It wasn't so funny anymore!!
I had to take my SLR camera with me on the hike which was tricky but got some great photos on the way back down when the weather began to get overcast. The camera survived luckily. As for me, I got mild frostbite on my tongue, knew I shouldn't have licked the ice and got an ice burn in the process dammit!!!
A great day.
posted by Adrian at 1:09 pm
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