Apart from a few insect bites to show for leaving the door open a little too long, we made it through our first night of freedom camping relatively unharmed. Drizzly weather meant it was a good day for driving, and made the wilds of Mt.Aspiring national park look all the more spectacular with mist rising from the forest, rushing waterfalls and rivers tumbling down over giant rocks into glassy lakes.
Zigzagging through mountains and past glimpses of the coastline eventually bring us to glacier country. We arrive in Franz Josef township and realise everything revolves around the glacier, so we decide we'd better go see what the fuss is about. We do a couple of the walks around the forest close to the glacier .OK...so it's pretty impressive!
Rob
Koru
When we've been drizzled on enough we retire to the comfort of our campervan park, and take in the World Cup 3rd place playoffs. Of course these couldn't go by without sitting in front of some boisterous Aussies who insist on reminding you what team their supporting every 4 seconds!
The following day we are just like schoolkids ready for that annual tour. We get our packed lunches and backpacks together and head off to meet the bus. This time though, instead of Dublin Zoo we will be hiking up Franz Josef glacier. Once we're all kitted out with waterproof gear, big woolly socks, hiking boots and the token favorite item of the day, crampons, we are ready to get hiking. Our initial briefing is from 'first day on the job' Geoff who is being trialled, well bless his woolly socks he is a bit serious, over-rehearsed and clearly nervous! After that we get split into two groups, adventurous and fit, or moderate pace. Definitely not too fit but hoping to make up for it with adventuring spirit we head off on the cool team with Guide George.
George and the Giant Glacier
He leads us up the terminal face of the glacier over the ice, side stepping through giant crevasses and crawling through blue ice caves. We often have to stop while the ever cheery George uses his pick axe to carve out a walkway for us. As we power on, 'group moderate' and poor ol' First Day Geoff get lost from time to time and have to radio George to check where to go next.
They follow one and others trails by looking for 'crunchies' marks left in the ice from the last peoples crampons, which to the untrained eye (or Geoff) are pretty hard to see. Rob points out they should just leave trails of Crunchies, the gold wrappers would be much easier to spot!
Blue Ice
Considering that this area gets 6-7 metres of rain per year, we are remarkably lucky with our bright sunny day and apart from crawling through drippy caves we have almost no need for our waterproof jackets.
We learn things like the Franz shuffle- not the latest dance craze but a way to manouver down steep steps- and other ways to use our crampons.Words like serac and moraine echo from suppressed memories of a Geography lesson long ago, and even though the sandwiches in our packed lunch were just as squishy -we never had a field trip quite like this one. George tells us that the glacier can advance or retreat anywhere between 1m and 5m a day. The landscape here changes so quickly and it is fascinating to see the points on the rock face around us where the glacier once reached 25, 50 or 100 years ago.
8 hours later our heads are as full of knowledge as our feet are tired and what better way to soothe our aching bodies that to head off to the local spa pools- after all we get free entry with our glacier passes. We laze about in pools of different temperature and chat to the group we hiked with. Despite the size of a glacier and imposing mountains around us - you can always be reminded that it is a small world, as it turns our one of the girls on our hike knows our friend Claire in Melbourne!
When our hands are sufficiently wrinkly and our feet a little less sore, we get changed and get back on the road to find our next adventure.
ps. We never did find out if First Day Geoff passed his trial !
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