Glaciers

Our next destination was the glaciers of the Southern Alps.

We had to choose between Fox Glacier and the more famous Franz Joseph.

We chose Fox Glacier...at the left... because it was still accessible by foot.  Franz Joseph had receded so far (thank you global warming) it was only accessible by helicopter.

This photo gives no sense of the size of Fox Glacier.  The snowfall on Mt. Douglas is seven and a half miles from the mouth of the glacier.

Fox Glacier and Franz Joseph are near the north end of the Southern Alps.  The park covers an area greater than the European Alps with many more peaks.

The two glaciers are very close to Mt. Cook...the tallest peak in New Zealand.  On this day, Mt. Cook insisted on playing peek-a-boo and never came out in full view.

Mt. Cook is about the height of Mt. Baker but far more difficult to scale.

It is the place Edmund Hillary learned his climbing skills before being the first to conquer Mt. Everest.

Fox Glacier is only accessible with a professional guide.  The guide service fortunately provided the climbing gear we needed...including crampons.

The approach to the glacier passed through a long valley of glacial moraine.  In this photo you can see where the ice has recently receded.  The rocky area below the tree-line is the schist the receding ice left behind...all since 1989.          

The Fox River flows out of the mouth of the glacier.  The point we started our climb.  To get some sense of scale, note the two people over Carol's shoulder...half way between her and the mouth of the glacier.

In this photo, you can get some sense of the scale of the glacier.

At its snout, the ice is gray...because of all the ground up rock imbedded in it.

As you move farther up and before it grinds up the gravel beneath it, the ice is an emerald blue.

The climb to the very top of the glacier would be an 8,000 foot ascent, getting increasingly steep and more dangerous as we went.  We were neither experienced enough nor in shape to try and make it all the way.

Carol was a little skittish about how steep the ascent was, how narrow the path, the slipperiness of the ice, the streams we had to cross, and boulders we had to clamber over.

And there was the crevasse right next to the final stretch of the climb.

It was a long and slow trip up.  Those small specks on top of the ice are the climbing party ahead of us.

But we did finally make it as far as we were allowed to go.

We were pretty psyched to have made it.





Fox Glacier is the fastest moving glacier in the world.  Its  ice...1,200 feet thick...moves 10 times faster than the average glacier.  It's pushed down the mountain by a 130 feet annual average snowfall.

On our way down, we passed a pile of trash.  We thought it was litter the guides and rangers had packed out.  No!  It was rubble climbers of Mt. Douglas had dropped down crevasses as they neared the top.  It had taken 70 years for the ice to digest it and spit it out.  (They know this because parts of a plane that had crashed into the mountain took that long to reappear).








At the bottom, Carol was very relieved she had made it...and gave our climbing guide a big hug.

We had planned on hiking in to see Franz Joseph glacier that afternoon, but the weather did not cooperate.  The mountain was socked it.

No matter!  It would have been hard to top the thrill of that morning's adventure.