Comments on: Fox Glacier

By: josh

josh — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 08:22:27 +0000

We stayed at Fox Glacier, about 25km south of Franz Joseph Glacier. We booked an all-day glacier hike and started the next morning. We were outfitted with “over trousers” and crampons (spikes for our boots) and headed for the glacier with our group of about 10 and two guides.

We hiked for about an hour and a half, and then got on the glacier. It was really cool hiking on the ice. The guides chopped stairs for us so we didn’t slip, and pointed out cool things along the way. We got to go in some holes like this one:

All in all we hiked on the glacier for about 4 hours, eating lunch in the middle. We walked over crevasses, saw caves, and all sorts of other things. We heard the glacier shifting a couple of times. The experience was really cool. This is also a temperate glacier located in a rain forrest.

Here are a couple more photos of the glacier:

By: Clara

Clara — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 23:00:48 +0000

Amazing pictures. Amazing experience. Even Hal exclaimed when I showed him the pictures. The striations in the bottom pictures are interesting. Is that rock imbedded in the glacier? Or just dirt? The hole was really neat. I’m silently comparing these formations with the Antarctic ice formations described in the book Endurance.

By: dad

dad — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 00:19:59 +0000

Awesome! Looks like an expedition with sherpas and stuff! I guess it’s too corny to say “Cool!” The ice cave must have been quite an experience to be inside. Did you feel nervous at all?

By: josh

josh — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 04:00:52 +0000

No, we didn’t feel nervous as we had guides with us so we were fairly sure things were safe. We did hear the ice shifting a couple of times which was cool.

The striations in the ice are dirt and/or dust, I believe. In another place, our guide pointed out some reddish dust in the ice, and said it came from dust storms in Australia. It blew over the sea and got caught in the stratosphere, and then came down in precipitation.

By: Kriz

Kriz — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:36:10 +0000

Glacier hikes are cool. Enjoying the shots..both the beutiful ones showcased here and the culturally hilarious ones like the signs on the last post. Clara- Endurance is a great book…I imagine it would be pretty intense reading it while sitting on a glacier.