Franz Josef Glacier

Wednesday, Dec 31st, we head off early for our full day hike on the Franz Joseph glacier. The west coast has two glaciers, the Franz Joseph and the Fox; both terminate near temperate rainforests at almost sea level which makes them unique since most glaciers are in alpine environments.


It was already raining when we got started on our guided glacier hike. The guides told us they do not give refunds or cancel trips because of rain since they would soon be out of business. The average rainfall is over 5 meters here on Franz Joseph. They fitted us out in waterproof outer pants and raincoats and hiking boots with crampons. We had to walk on quite a bit of rock - the glacier is still 2 kilometers away from Dan in this photo.

And so it begins. Our guide had 11 of us in our group - mostly Germans, I think. The guide would use his pickaxe to make a path for us to follow. He would say reassuring things like, "You'll be okay if you stay on the path I make, but it isn't safe to walk anywhere outside the path." and then told us if we needed to use the bathroom to just go anywhere outside the path.

The glacier itself was incredible.

Looking west down the valley from on the glacier. We could see that the weather back in town was much better than the rain we were having up on the glacier.

The mountains of ice were huge. I guess now we can say we had the west coast experience. We hiked on slippery steep ice for 8 hours in the pouring rain with only a 10 minute stop for lunch in drenching rain and cold. The waterproof gear wasn't really waterproof either.

Lots of ups and downs over the ice. Several times I thought how they must have taken the pictures for the brochures on one of only a few sunny days up here. Everyone in the brochure was wearing shorts and smiling. Not many smiles in our group.

Obviously, this was at the beginning of the experience when the rain wasn't as fierce and our spirits weren't yet crushed.

We stayed towards the back of the group. Everyone else bunched up together almost walking on each others feet. Not sure why, but I didn't want to get hit if someone fell - which actually happened towards the end of the day. One of the larger guys fell behind me onto his knees and slide forwards almost taking me out as well. The guide told him to rub some ice on it - har har.

There were several of these really cool looking blue ice holes; just don't fall in! It was quite the experience. Once the rain really started pouring down you couldn't really see anything. And trudging around on ice for 8 hours is too long. At least no one got hurt other than blisters, sore muscles and bruised feet.

Once we got off the glacier we got some coffee and drove to Hokitika and spent New Years eve warm and dry in a ocean side cabin watching movies.