Franz Joseph Glacier

Mark and I were both keen to do a glacier trek based on people we'd talked to and pictures we'd seen. Not knowing when we were arriving we didn't book anything ahead of time. We awoke to a beautiful clear day, absolutely perfect for a hike on a glacier, and rushed over to the office to see if we could get out on a tour that day. Unfortunately there was only 1 spot left of the full day tour, so we rocked off for it, with the other one going on the 3/4 day tour. Mark won, and the lady advised him he'd better be quick, because the bus was leaving soon. After he rushed to the car, got some food and changed, he ran back to find out the bus left without him. Ridiculous. So in the end, we decided to roll the dice with the weather and booked in for the full day the next day. With some time on our hands, we checked out a couple sites close by.
We've run out of stuff to talk about, so Mark just meditates now...


Luckily the weather cooperated with us, and we heading out in the sunshine the next morning. Now Mark, T and I have found over the course of this trip that we all dispise guided tours, especially when the groups are really big. We much prefer to be able to go at our own pace, and have the freedom to do as we please. In this case, for obvious reasons, we had no choice. As we met up at the base of the glacier, our worste fears were realized...the group was huge.

Luckily they split the 5 odd people into 5 groups, each with 1 guide, with each group going at different speeds depending how keen people were. We went in the first group, so it was actually not bad at all. Our guide and the group were all good fun. That's our guide Mike up ahead. This guy get's free heli rides up to the top of the glacier through the company on his days off and does backcountry ski trips. At the top of the glacier, they average 40m (yes..fourty meters!!) of snow a year. Needless to say, it's bottomless powder all the time.


The caves and crevaces on the glacier are contantly changing at it advances and melts, so it's total luck of the draw what you'll get into on any given day. We seemed to get pretty lucky, with a new crevace and a new cave both opening up the day we went.


Some of them were pretty tight...

Lunch time...



After lunch, as we got further up the glacier, the ice became less dirty and a deeper blue. And we finally got into some caves. Very cool (no pun intended).

This was one of the new caves, which was about 2 feet wide and high. I went through first, which was cool, but was regretable because we didn't get any pictures of us inside the cave.


So just pretend this is us...


And time for one more cave on the way out.

All in all a really fun experience. Pricey, but I reckon worth it.