Glacier mince
There can't be too many places in the world where you can trek through temperate rainforest for an hour and a half and end up halfway up one of the only advancing glaciers in the world, but the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island is one of them.
The Fox and Franz Josef glaciers are majestic rivers of frozen snow, flowing slowly but (at the moment) steadily from the slopes of the Southern Alps stopping roughly 250 meters above sea level. The Fox Glacier township is where we found ourselves last weekend and we booked ourselves a half day hike on the glacier itself. After climbing the steep valley walls for an hour or so we came to the access point for the glacier itself, and spent about an hour walking across this most unique of environments. Unfortunately we weren't blessed with brilliant weather but the scale and majesty of the glacier wasn't lost on us. From its neve to its terminal face the Fox Glacier is about seven kilometers long, and it is advancing after years of retreat. You wouldn't expect a drought in a country two thousand miles away to cause a glacier to advance, but as the warm air from Australia crosses the Tasman Sea it evaporates sea water, storing it as rain until it hits New Zealand's southern alps. The vapour falls as snow which is essentially fuel for the glaciers and the warmer Australia gets the more the glaciers will advance.
As we climbed down and looked at the glacier before departing, our guide advised us to take a good look as the chances are it will never look this way again. It's such a fascinating landscape, hopefully one day I'll get to see just how much it changes every year.
The next day I celebrated the glorious weather we awoke to by getting into a tiny plane, climbing to 12,000 feet and jumping out with a large man called James strapped to my back. I had entered the exhilirating and rather bizarre world of tandem skydiving. It's very difficult to describe because there is really no feeling like it (certainly none that I've ever had) but seeing Mts Cook and Tasman (NZ's highest peaks), the glaciers and a few rivers and lakes from that high up was incredible. It's alot more gentle and far less scary than I'd expected - mainly because the views are so breathtaking there's no time to be scared. I'd recommend it to anyone.
The Fox and Franz Josef glaciers are majestic rivers of frozen snow, flowing slowly but (at the moment) steadily from the slopes of the Southern Alps stopping roughly 250 meters above sea level. The Fox Glacier township is where we found ourselves last weekend and we booked ourselves a half day hike on the glacier itself. After climbing the steep valley walls for an hour or so we came to the access point for the glacier itself, and spent about an hour walking across this most unique of environments. Unfortunately we weren't blessed with brilliant weather but the scale and majesty of the glacier wasn't lost on us. From its neve to its terminal face the Fox Glacier is about seven kilometers long, and it is advancing after years of retreat. You wouldn't expect a drought in a country two thousand miles away to cause a glacier to advance, but as the warm air from Australia crosses the Tasman Sea it evaporates sea water, storing it as rain until it hits New Zealand's southern alps. The vapour falls as snow which is essentially fuel for the glaciers and the warmer Australia gets the more the glaciers will advance.
As we climbed down and looked at the glacier before departing, our guide advised us to take a good look as the chances are it will never look this way again. It's such a fascinating landscape, hopefully one day I'll get to see just how much it changes every year.
The next day I celebrated the glorious weather we awoke to by getting into a tiny plane, climbing to 12,000 feet and jumping out with a large man called James strapped to my back. I had entered the exhilirating and rather bizarre world of tandem skydiving. It's very difficult to describe because there is really no feeling like it (certainly none that I've ever had) but seeing Mts Cook and Tasman (NZ's highest peaks), the glaciers and a few rivers and lakes from that high up was incredible. It's alot more gentle and far less scary than I'd expected - mainly because the views are so breathtaking there's no time to be scared. I'd recommend it to anyone.
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