Moving to New Zealand--Franz Joseph Glacier

..Living the goal..

Hitting the ice....
| Franz Joseph Glacier |

Easter. A time of colored eggs, chocolate, pumpkins, and cold weather. Sound strange? We're thinking the same thing as New Zealand starts to change from green to gold and shed the warmth of summer. Our brains just can't seem to get around April being the beginning of Fall. So, with the Easter weekend upon us, we decided to shed denial and welcome the cold by visiting the Franz Joseph Glacier on the West Coast.
The FJ Glacier is a temperate glacier--one of only four in the world--two of which are in New Zealand (the others are in South America). This means that where the glacier flows, it almost never snows. Look at that. I'm a poet and I didn't even realize it.
So, Jeannine and I booked a full-day hike on the glacier through The Guiding Company, grabbed our spikes, ice axe, and proceeded up to the 'flow'. The glacier was at it's lowest point since '98, so we had a little bit of a hike up to the beginning. On top of that, Franz Joseph was experiencing its driest summer in over 110 years. How's that for timing? In an area that generally gets 11 meters of rain a year, we had a gorgeous warm day to hike amidst the ice.
The photos below can give you a better idea, but this was really an incredible experience. No other hike in the world takes you into the heart of a glacier and here we were crawling through crevasses, ice tunnels, and mountains of ice. Everywhere around us you could hear the sound of ice falling, followed by a rush of wind from the larger pieces. Luckily, our guides were experienced enough not to take us into the places that were considered suspect. Or so we thought. The one guide Jeannine and I were 'lucky' to have, decided that it would be fun to force our group to proceed through an ice tunnel roughly the size of a tire. Each person that went through the tunnel--wanted nothing more than to quickly get out and away from 'Gabe the Guide'. There was good reason to see why--pretty much every person came up soaking wet. When my turn came up, I entered the tunnel with a great deal of enthusiasm--only to find that I couldn't fit my shoulders through the entrance. Dragging myself further forward, I found I could no longer stand crouching. So, with a sigh of defeat, I flung myself sideways into the fu#king cold water and slid forward, barely missing a five foot drop into a further abyss. "Don't fall down there," Gabe shouted. "No shit, Gabe. Thanks," I muttered to myself and then figured out a way to climb out. Everyone else's attitude towards the experience was pretty much the same: We had a psycho guide on our hands.
We managed to enjoy the rest of trip by taking most of what Gabe said in a suspicious manner and voting on someone from the group to be the first guinea pig. Luckily, we didn't hit anymore dangerous pitfalls and came away from the trip exhausted and loving every minute. If you get the opportunity, this is not something to be missed.

Videos:
A panoramic view of the glacier

Photos: