Franz Joseph

We arrived in Franz Joseph after a fairly long drive from Lake Mahinapua. The hostel was amazing, surrounded by rainforests and snow capped mountains. It even had a 20 person hot tub free of charge that we could use, and we definitely took advantage of it. That evening we had a presentation for the best dressed from the night before, and due to Ross Matthews outrageous fancy dress he won a free pole dancing lesson for when we got back to Queenstown J We then entered another killer pool competition but with no avail, we soon hit the sack as we had to be up early.

It was birthday day for Bradders today, and he was celebrating in style by all of us climbing up Franz Joseph Glacier. We started at 9am, so we got kitted up with crampons and safety gear. We had all day up on the glacier, it was amazing. The sheer sizes of some of the blocks of ice are incredible; we were climbing through little tunnels and crevices. We had to use our ice axes in some points due to the steepness of the ice, we loved it. Once again our experience of climbing in the Lake District helped us a lot with the difficult terrain. Our instructor was a right laugh and took us to a place that hadn't been explored by any guides before so everything we came across hadn't been trod on by humans J We soon reached the highest point that we were allowed to go, we got beautiful views both looking up the glacier and down into the valley. We soon headed back down the glacier for birthday celebratory drinks; our instructor came out with us and got Brads extremely drunk. He then decided he wanted to call home in the state he was in; Ross found him shouting at Nan Dodd telling her to shut up haha. So Ross quickly took the computer off him and sent him to bed lol. Funny times.