Franz Josef Glacier

Here are some pics from Franz Josef, the video is on it's way. (hopefully)

Franz Josef Glacier

Holly & I hike up the Franz Josef river bed so that we could touch the glacier. It was a fun hike that took about an hour. Holly had been telling me throughout the day that glacier rivers could be identified by the grey color of the water and sure enough the water is grey and really cold! We bouldered along the river bed, climbed up a waterfall (this was a little adlib, but it got us to where we wanted to go). There are lots of waterfalls all along the way to the glacier.

We had just arrived at the glacier where we could see the river coming out from underneath the ice, when you could start to hear the ice creak, I just got my movie camera taking movies in time to see a huge chuck of glacier break away crash on to the ground, we were about 100 yards away, but it was really way cool!

We spent the night in the village of Franz Josef and hiked around a small lake, Lake Matheson, before nightfall. The view of the mountain from the lake was really great, which was a great reflecting pool.

The next morning we hiked up to Fox Glacier, it was a wonderful hike thru the woods to a place were there had been a chalet in the 30's used to view the glacier (which was much larger then), it is just so fun to be able to do these hikes and see these wonderful sites and hear the birdsong and etc, etc, etc

Next up heading to the fiordlands via ?


View Larger Map