A glacier is simply a steep river of ice flowing slowly down a valley of a mountain. It didn´t sound terribly impressive to me until I actually saw one and experienced it´s awesome nature up close.

There are 2 glaciers initiating from a similar spot on mount Cook on the west coast of New Zealand. Fox glacier and Franz Joseph. On the route towards Franz Joseph you drive past several signs informing of how far the glacier had advanced in the past. We drove at least 4 km past the first one before even beginning the walking trail to the terminal face.

The walk is interesting because you are walking in a valley which has been created by the iceflow itself and it is a terrain of scarred rock and debris. As you approach, the ice pack becomes larger and larger until you are at a roped off viewpoint. We gawped here for a while, eying the signs which warned us not to go any further without a guide until a man ducked under the rope to take his 2 young children closer. As he disappeared from view we thought "well if they can do it..." and followed suit.

We were well aware of the dangers of land and ice slides and carefully guaged our getaway route in case the worst happened. We passed another sign which told us again that we should not advance. No sign of the family man, so we carried on. Soon, as we got even nearer we could see more clearly the nature of a part of the glacier which was jutting forwards like a finger. It featured a large cavelike hole which created more risk of a collapse, and although we decided that we had time to run away from the ice, we realised that this relatively small area was in fact supporting a massive scree slope behind it which would be far harder to avoid.

We passed another sign and this time it all but told us we were stupid fools and if we didn´t have a guide then we would definitely die. It was here that we began to see the dripping around the cave and to hear little cracking sounds as the sun blazed down on the delicate formation. Hmm - the children had actually gone further than this but we were not so brave. We hung about for only a few moments to take in the view before heading back at as fast a pace as we could safely manage.

There is the opportunity to take a guided tour onto the glacier but we were too cheapskate to do so, but I think we made up for it with our adventurous jaunt and saw an enormous natural phenomenon in a very natural way.

The glacier