Glacier Walking

As if we hadn't seen enough of extremes - beautiful beaches, beautiful mountain ranges, why not add beautiful Glaciers to the list?


Jay, Margie, El and I jumped in the car (this time with the girls doing all the driving!) and headed across to Fox and Franz Joseph Glaciers. We stayed near Fox Glacier the first night, but decided to climb Franz Joseph the next day.


This is a picture of Franz Joseph before we got close to it and climbed up, look strange to anyone?

Turns out that Franz Joseph Glacier is (together with Fox Glacier) very unique. It is one of 3 or 4 in the world that are just 240 meters above sea level, and descend into temperate rain forests. I know for myself, when looking at the Glacier from afar, my mind was saying that this is not what a Glacier was supposed to look like - nor was it supposed to be thriving in such a warm climate! (see my clothes below don't seem to match the glacier behind me!

Well don't let the last pic fool you, when we got closer to the glacier our guides got us properly suited up, including rain jackets and these metal additions to the bottom of our boots that allowed us to walk on the ice without falling over (something we all know I'm prone to do)!! This is me inside one of the 3 or so tunnels of ice we walked through:

And this is what the view looked like of the glacier when we got near the top!

I think after this point, it would be hard to argue that we really have seen and done it all during the course of these 4 months!