Day 6 Fox Glacier

It was a cold night in Franz Josef and a chilly morning which made it hard to emerge from the comforts of our humble abode. Our normal breakfast of yogurt and muesli was a bit different due to finding passion fruit yoplait. Chad might figure out how to use his personal French press by the end of this trip. This morning he could stand a fork up in it the coffee it was so thick.

We were on the road by around 8 and one of the first at the Franz Josef glacier terminal face track parking lot. We hiked up the path with the views of the glacier and surroundings getting better around each corner as the sun started to light everything up. All the helicopters flying people to the glacier were quite obnoxious, but we would be flying on one later today. On the hike down we took a couple short spur trails, peters pool (great reflection pool) and sentinel rock.

By the time we got back to the parking lot it was nearly full, and it was not a small lot, of camper vans. We drove back into town to try get some cell service or Wifi to try book a few reservations for the upcoming days. We made some lunch in front of the Indian food restaurant and proceeded to check in for our HeliHike of Franz Josef Glacier.

After all the check in procedures we finally walked out to the helipad where we got our quick, to the point, briefing. Our helicopter landed and the pilot got out and fueled his helicopter by himself. (Chad obviously noticed this, and the fact that no one was standing by with fire extinguishers, no long sleeve shirt and all that other stuff we have to do in the US) We all crammed in and took our quick 5 minute flight to the bottom of the glacier. We were promptly off loaded as the others waiting to get their ride back patiently waited.

The on ice briefing right next to the landing and taking off helicopters every 5 minutes was quite difficult to completely understand. The basics were something along the lines of; if you do things you're not supposed to, you'll slip and then die. We hiked up the glacier about 1/3 of the way. We hiked through some neat crevices, the blue ice was really cool. While we were on on the glacier small ice chunks kept breaking off, and were quite loud, however, then, a huge chunk broke off from the face and tumbled to the ground below, and it sounded like thunder as car sized chunks were pulverized into a muddy brown mess as it turned into what resembled an avalanche. We ended our helihike with another short ride down the valley in our helicopter and then made our way to the top10 fox glacier holiday park. Where we parked in a big gravel pit.

We had dinner at the lake Matheson cafe, with beautiful views on mount cook. The food was really good, and we even got homemade ice cream with homemade cookies in it, yum!Read more