marylonghorn: The glacier

Two of the most popular tourist destinations of New Zealand's south island are the glaciers: Franz Josef and Fox. Though I thought about passing up this experience solely because of how many tourists flock here every year, I reconsidered, and ended up booking a Fox Glacier hike. I am so glad I did!

While Franz Josef is the more popular of the two glaciers, simply because it was accessible first, Fox Glacier is a smaller and less touristy place. The township, which is about half an hour south of Franz Josef, is smaller, with only a few accommodations and a handful of eateries. Out here on the west coast, it has a "wild west" feel, with not many people, not many towns, and not much cell reception. :-)

There's only one backpackers' in town, but I chose to book a dorm room at a similarly-priced inn next door. I could have had a lot more social interaction at the hostel, it turns out, because the inn was fairly vacant. However, this turned out to be a real treat, because I ended up having an entire ensuite room to myself! This has literally been the first time in three months I've had my own room and a quiet night's rest. So nice!

The following morning I showed up at the Fox Glacier Guiding headquarters to start our group hike. They fitted us with rain pants, rain coats, socks, hiking boots, crampons, mittens, and hats, to prepare us for the alpine temperatures and the steady rain we would be dealing with on our day-long hike.

It was a short drive to the foothills of the glacier where we began our hike.
Looking up towards the hills, you can't see the glacier in this pic, but it's around the left bend.

We started our hike towards the ice.

We climbed around the high path that had been etched in the hills. This path doesn't need to be used anymore, but was used years ago when the glacier was bigger and people couldn't walk up to it from the ground.

Hiking through the hills.

We finally made it to the ice and everyone put on their crampons. This is a view from the ice, looking back to the foot of the glacier where we started.

A few quick facts about the glacier:

New Zealand is one of the only places in the world to have glaciers and rainforest side by side. This is due to the high level of rainfall.
The foot of the glacier receives approximately 7 meters of rainfall per year, while the top portion can receive up to 15 meters of rainfall annually!
Fox Glacier is 13 kilometers long, and though over all has been receding in the past 100 years, it is currently advancing at the rate of about one meter per year (several centimeters per day).
For intersesting facts about glaciers, including anatomy, check out the Wikipedia article here.

A crevasse we were able to climb down:

We continued our hike up the glacier, with our crampons and sticks.

As we went up, the guides actually used axes (like the one I'm holding) to cut stairways and footholes in the ice for us.

The terrain of the glacier consisted of lots of cracks and crevasses. The guides went ahead of us to make sure our route was safe.

A view back down the glacier as we ascended even further.

We reached a very high point of the glacier in the afternoon. Because of weather and glacial conditions, the guides said they had not been able to take groups that high up in a long time.