The west coast glaciers

During my drive up to the glaciers it poured with rain all day, I found a campsite near the centre of Fox Glacier township and set up camp for the night. After raining all night it brightened up in the morning and I decided to take the walk out to the foot of the glacier as it was all flat walking. There was a car park about 500m from the foot. There were kea birds in the car park, I am told they are very fond of ripping off any rubber on cars but these seemed happy just to pose for the cameras.

The walk was along the side of the river and quite a reasonable footpath.

I did not get all the way as it started to rain again and by the time I got back to the car park I was freezing cold and soaked.

The next morning the weather looked a bit better but not for long.

I stayed at Fox one more night and decided to move on to Franz Joseph, This town was just as uninspiring as Fox especially when it’s raining. The next day the weather brightened up a little and I decided to take a helicopter flight  to view the glaciers.

This is a better way to travel!

 

First we went up Franz Joseph Glacier.

The surface of the glacier is not suitable for walking on, also you can see the blue colouring of the ice which introduces the bright blue in the glacier rivers.

We then went on to Fox Glacier. I was lucky to have the front seat.

This was where I was walking two days before.

The plan was to land on this flat area at the top but the clouds were coming over the top of the mountain quite fast and the pilot decided that it was too risky as we may have had trouble getting off again.

There is a river that runs down the mountain and under the glacier.

Back to Franz Joseph following the route of the mountain road that I had driven in along.

A very enjoyable flight, it was a pity about the landing as I would like to have got some pictures other than through the windows of the chopper but the picture below show the pilot made the right decision, it was raining again by the afternoon and we did get a 25% discount as we had not landed.