Andrea decided not to stick around in Franz Josef since she can't climb the glacier as she twisted her ankle a while back, so she took the bus to the next town, Wanaka, instead.
The rest of us (mainly) headed out to Franz Josef Glacier Guides for our 1/2 Day hike up the glacier. After some confusion on how to check in, we were kitted out in boots, crampons (specially patented crampons called Ice Talonz), and for some people a gore-tex jacket. We weren't allowed to wear cotton pants as the don't dry very fast if they get wet and they don't retain any heat when wet. Good thing I went clothes shopping in Nelson :). I was given size 3 boots and they were still too big, but they didn't have any smaller sizes so I was given an extra pair of woolen socks to pad the boots. We then loaded up onto a few tour buses to get driven to the base of the glacier.
After a bit of a forest hike we reached the plain and river at the base of terminal face of the glacier. Because the glacier is so huge, the perspective of what you are looking at gets skewed. I guessed that we were about a kilometre away from the glacier, but it was actually 2.5 kilometers away.
We split up into groups based on quickness - I chose to go with the ultra-slow group because I was not sure how I'd be on the 45 minutes of climbing stairs hacked into the ice. I turned out to be the fasted of the slow group - not hard as my competition was a bunch of senior citizens and a glacier guide with a torn achilles tendon and a fractured ankle :)
Because it had rained really hard a few weeks ago the river at the base of the glacier at rerouted, which meant that instead of an easy hike across a rocky plain to the glacier we had to climb the valley wall, climbing up and down four ladders along the way. That was actually the hardest part of the climb up. Once we got to the glacier we put on our crampons... I mean Ice Talonz... and proceeded up the steps hacked into the ice face. Because the glacier moves about a metre a day, the guides have to keep coming out every day to recut the steps and assess which routes to take up.
Aside from the fact that my legs were too short for some of the steps, I made it up okay. As we got higher up (we climbed about 400 metres) it got colder, and at the top I put on my jacket.
We stopped for a snack break at the top and looked around a while, and then headed back down. By then my feet were really hurting because even with the extra socks the boots were too big and the socks had bunched at the front so my toes were being mashed with every step.
The 2.5 km hike back to the bas was long and tiring. We got back around 2 and Susan and I headed to a bar/restaurant called The Landing for lunch (Shepherd's Pie and peas and mashed potato for me).
The original plan was a curry from the sushi/curry/noodle van, but they didn't open until 6. I then spent about two hours sitting in the hot tub at the motel with Norrie and a girl from Luton called Sharon who was taking the Magic Bus around New Zealand. This made me less sore but much sleepier, so when I got out I barely made it through dinner (mango and bread - really not hungry) before crashing in my bunk with a book.
One of the things that is really nice about the motel room is that we got a kitchenette. Another odd think is that there is no shower stall, just a corner of the room with a shower and a curtain to pull around. Suffice it to say that the entire floor got soaked when someone took a shower. That being said, it's one of the best showers we've had so far.
No comments:
Post a Comment