Franz Josef Glacier Stories


Hike on Franz Josef Glacier

After staying the night in the small town of Franz Josef, we set off on a half-day hike on Franz Josef Glacier. It is 12 kilometres long as it descends down the valley, and, unlike most glaciers which are receding slowly at around 5 centimetres a day, it is moving forwards down the valley at 2 metres a day! We walked for about 30 minutes up the valle...


Franz Josef Glacier!

Today we climbed the Franz Josef Glacier! It was so much fun if a little tiring. We were supplied with yet another delightful outfit to climb the ice including some crampons which were pretty unusual to walk in! We walked to the terminal face of the ice and climbed up to topof the front. We were quite lucky as there werea couple of caves and crevises th...


Glaciers

We headed south down the beautiful west coast road to the Franz Joseph and Fox glaciers, which are unusual in terminating within a couple of miles of the sea. We viewed the Franz Joseph glacier from a distance as changing riverbed conditions made the walk up to it unsafe. We were able to walk to within 100 metres of the Fox glacier which glowed an eerie...


21st April - 7th May

21st Feeling fairly rough this morning as I had to get up early and wash my hair about five times to remove all pink dye. Managed to get packed and on the bus without being to late. We headed off to Franz Joseph today and on the way we stopped off at this little museum called the Bushman museum. Basically its all about these mad New Zealander’s who use...