Jess Wanders Off

 

Well, today I did the full-day hike up to and on Franz Josef Glacier, and it was really spectacular.  I was actually dreading this part of the trip due to my lack of athleticism but we actually went at a reasonable pace (either that or all my running back home is paying off!)  Not that it wasn’t strenuous at times, because it was!

From afair the glacier looks like a giant spill of ice mixed with dirt, nestled between two mountains.  I took one look at that and immediately thought, “Holy sh*t, I can’t climb this.”

 

 

When we first got to the terminal face (this is the giant sheet of ice that you must scramble up at the beginning to get on top of the glacier) I was trying very hard not to panic.  I’m not really built for glacier adventures.  I’m built for kicking back on a nice soft couch, beer in hand, watching a Mavericks game.  Our guide had us strap on our “Ice Talonz” (the z makes all the difference there) and then we got ready to go.  The Ice Talonz are basically these spikes that you stick onto the bottom of your hiking boots.  When I saw those instruments of torture I got even more scared.  But I didn’t have to worry.  They’re INCREDIBLY great at gripping the ice, and felt very comfortable once you had them on the ice (on the rocks they were a bit awkward).

 

 

So after we were all situated with our Talonz on our feat, we headed toward the terminal face.  There is an incredibly steep staircase here that the guides cut by hand (with their oh-so-sexy pickaxes) that we were expected to ascend, holding on only to a rope that they fixed along the side.  It was realllllly steep, but surprisingly not as bad as it looks.  I was only mildly gasping for breath when we were done.  Here’s a picture of the terminal face — see the staircase?  It’s in the middle.  On either side were sluices of water running down the terminal face.  Today was a very warm day, and the glacier was hard at work melting.

 

 

After we had gotten a fair ways up the terminal face, we started to see some incredible ice formations.  The ice down here is very dirty, since it’s intermingled with all the sediment:

 

 

Little pools of water are everywhere here.  It took us about a good couple of hours to get out to where the ice was less dirty.  We stopped to catch our breaths and look back the way we had come.  It was a gorgeous view back toward town, but it’s a good thing I’m not prone to vertigo!  We were hiiiiiiiigh up.

 

 

After a 15 minute lunch break we were off again, and the ice formations started to get more interesting.  We had a few shelves we had to sidle through, and you could start to see the gorgeous pure blue ice starting to peek out:

 

 

There was also a really pretty waterfall that snaked down the edge of a nearby cliff.  It was really a tall waterfall.  Here’s a picture of me, all bundled up and looking like the Abominable Snowman, in front of the waterfall.  Aren’t my Ice Talonz incredibly sexy???

 

 

The ice in general is so gorgeous.  I’m really glad I did the full day trip because it meant that we had a full 6 hours on the ice.

 

 

But, of course, the best part of all is the blue ice.  It’s incredibly beautiful and there are lots of little caves and crevasses and blue-ice water pools.  It was difficult to focus on photography when we were trying to watch our footing, but I do think I got some spectacular shots:

 

 

Looking through the blue ice cave to the sky:

 

 

 

 

Here’s another picture of me (like the very first one on this post) scampering through a blue ice crevasse:

 

 

The following pics may give you a better idea of how blue this ice really is:

 

 

 

There was also a good deal of liquid on this glacier.  Dripping runoff, huge pools between cracks, etc.  It was really important to watch your footing around these pools because you could think it was stable ice around it, only to step next to it, have the ice cave in, and get your leg sunk into the pool.  Luckily that didn’t happen to me, but we all had our fair share of getting our feet wet.

 

 

 

Our guide said that the ice had changed completely from yesterday (apparently the route and the formations change on a daily basis so no trip is ever the same) and he actually got us a bit lost.  After sliding under some really tight ice shelves, wading through chilly pools of water, and then having to backtrack a couple of times, our guide sort of stopped, scratched his chin, and goes, “Right.  Well.  We’ve got to get off this glacier SOMEHOW.”  So then I knew that we were sort of lost.

However, we were an intrepid group, and we followed our valiant leader, and he managed to get us back to where we needed to be.  We started heading back toward the terminal face, and the ice got dirty again with sediments:

 

 

 

We also happened to see a New Zealand parrot.  It was a big green fellow, very plump, with more of the body and feathers of a hawk (except for the color) and then a parrot head.  Very interesting little creature.  He wasn’t at all bothered by our presence, so we got in a few good pictures.

 

 

 

After that it was pretty much time for us to descend the terminal face again.

 

 

After reaching terra firma, we got rid of our Ice Talonz and made the 45 minute trek back out of the park, passing yet another gorgeous waterfall on our way:

 

 

And that was that!  It was a looooong day: we left at 9:15 am and arrived back at 6:15 pm, with about 6.5 hours on the ice itself. My feet and back are a bit sore but I’m so, so glad I did this, as much as I was initially dreading it.  It really wasn’t bad at all, and when it did get rough (having to leap from one ice bank to the other over a 3 foot-wide bottomless fissure, for example) it made me feel quite adventurous.  🙂   So I’m immensely pleased that I did it.

I’m going to go have dinner now with Paul and some of the girls from the glacier trek.  We are starrrrrrrrrving.

Tomorrow I will be heading to Wanaka after a quick stop at the Fox Glacier (which, no, I will NOT be trekking — had enough of glaciers for awhile!!) so I will update you all tomorrow night.

Again thanks for reading my blog and thanks for the comments 🙂 

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 23rd, 2006 at 1:59 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.