Day 157 Thursday 11th February 2010
Johno says
Today we were to travel with our sore heads even further south down the west coast to Franz Josef. Our first stop was at a little town called Ross, apparently the gold rush in the mid 1800's brought thousands to the area but now only 4,000 remain, after a quick spot of gold panning we headed for the Alpine village of Franz Josef which was the home to some accessible glaziers. On our approach to our hostel we could see the monster glazier as a backdrop to this little town which made again a great view - I have never seen such a contrast in scenery before as we are witnessing in NZ so far. Then we decided that it would be great to climb the glacier for the afternoon so we headed out on a guided tour, the glacier almost seemed unreal with such a huge block of ice over spilling from the mountain above. The weather luckily cleared up for our climb and we were fitted with some good walking shoes and crampons (spikes) to climb the ice, we firstly had to climb quite a steep rocky hill (but really it was rock on ice, unbelievable until you get close enough to realise it is actually ice!) It was funny to see Stace walking ahead as she ended up crawling up the hill with the rest of the group looking at her - she was promptly moved to second in the single profile up the ice with help and support from our guide, then we made it to the main ice shelf which we climbed for the next hour or so. What a surreal experience - being on a giant ice cube!! Feeling quite shattered by the time we returned to the valley floor again we headed back to the hostel for some rest avoiding the invitation of round two with Irish Adrian!!