Not content with all the walking we had done over the weekend, come the Monday we decided to sign ourselves up to yet another walk/hike (we really are suckers for punishment!) although this time it was a mere 6km round trip and there were no backpacks in sight, so we felt it was something we could cope with! The most exciting part about it was that rather than just another normal walk we would be exploring the mighty Fox Glacier!
Some of you may know that Michelle, Carey and I all tried to hike the Franz Josef glacier when we were last here a couple of years ago and were sadly thwarted by torrential rain (30cm in 24 hours!) weather so bad that apparently it closed access to the glaciers for over a week, so this time we were relieved to discover that it was dry, the river was low and we were going to be able to go on our 'Fox Trot' half day hike!
The intrepid crew journey to the ice!
The Fox glacier is one of the most accessible glaciers in the world, and was named after a visit of the then Prime Minister of New Zealand Sir William Fox in 1872, rather than as an advertising ploy of Fox's glacier mints - which strangely didn't seem to be for sale in the shop, surely a massive marketing opportunity being missed there??!! The glacier covers a distance of around 13kms and its river of ice falls about 2600 metres as it descends to the base of the Southern Alps. Its difficult to get a perspective on it all but it really is rather large and not without some danger - as you can see!
Note the lack of colour discrimination - you can be killed by white or black falling rocks!!
With that many warnings of impending doom its a wonder I went up at all!
These signs are not entirely unrealistic, as people have died in recent years by being crushed under the ice, however buoyed up by our weekend survival experience we launched forth undeterred! In order to reach the glacier you have to climb many steps (about 800) through some rainforest like landscape, and we were suitably contemptuous of the weak willed 2 american guys that were in our group who gave up after about 10 minutes and decided it was all too much effort and that their legs couldn't take it! Pathetic! We carried on without them, thrilled to now basically have our own private tour guide and stopped along the way to collect the purest water I have ever tasted from a lovely mountain spring - evian eat your heart out!
Proving we aren't scared of anything!
A well earned drink!
Mel demonstrating why this particular rest stop is known as Kodak corner!
The mighty Fox Glacier!
It really was quite high up!
We eventually reached a point where it stopped being safe to just wear our walking boots and we had to strap on crampons for grip and pick up an alpen stock for balance! I think these would have come in useful in Britain over the winter you've just had! Wearing these allowed us to grip the ice firmly (although you do have to stomp down - all those years of sounding like a herd of elephants coming downstairs had finally paid off Mum!) You also suddenly felt a real drop in temperature so we put on extra layers and made our way onto the ice!
Great for standing on someone's foot on the tube!
Walking on ice!
Who put John in charge of the ice pick??!
Its really difficult to get a perspective of how big the ice is from the pictures below but you can put the Eiffel Tower onto it and it would just be a little speck! As the ice melts and shifts it forms arches, crevices and moulins which are cool ice tunnels (like ice log flumes). The more compressed the ice becomes the bluer it appears as the oxygen is compressed. Apparently our guide once was lowered into a moulin where the ice was as blue as John Ketchen's jacket above!
A moulin bleu!!
Check out how small the people look!
It was great fun and very awe inspiring, if a little precarious at times, especially going down hill!
However we were helped by the series of ice steps that had been cut out so that we could get a good grip!
We made it down without incident and were rewarded for our hard work by a certificate at the end! Our guide even said that we had been the nicest group she had taken up for ages and as she asked how we all knew each other I gave a little witness by explaining that we had all met in the same hall and she said that her mum had gone to meetings when she was little so we explained a bit about the memorial! So never be afraid to mention it!
All that walking worked up an appetite so we set up a make shift camp and heated up the rest of our pasta from dinner the night before on the camping stoves, right next to the proper cafe! We weren't ashamed and it all tasted lovely!
The new Braid avenue - minus Jessie!
After lunch there was just the long car journey back to Christchurch to get through, helped by 80s power ballads on the ipod to sing along to (sorry Salini, not a butternut squash in sight!) and the odd 'incident' in Sheffield (our lips are sealed!!!). It was home safe with only a few blisters and bruises to show for our adventure and a couple of days recovery before our next activity packed weekend in Rotorua!
Home safe and sound (and hopefully with firmer thighs!!)
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