South Island Day 10 – Fox Glacier Heli-Hike

So, since Mish and I aren’t morning folks, we didn’t wake up in time for the little Lake Matheson hike. It’s really just a short one that brings you around the lake, to give you a good mirror shot of the mountain and glacier.. But the day was a little cloudy anyway..

When we did wake up, we did drive out to take a quick look at the peaks again from the same spot as yesterday – not much different today… Hopefully the clouds clear a little for our Hike!

We headed over to the check-in for the Hike, which started off with a bus ride just about back to where we were taking photos that morning.. But, we pulled into a little helicopter pad instead, and got fitted with our gear. Mish and I had our hiking boots on, so we didn’t need to borrow theirs.. Thankfully! they looked stinky, and likely not nearly as comfortable and warm as our own. After a quick lesson regarding take-off and landing procedures around a helicopter, we were broken into groups (weight distributed), and headed out to the helipad.

Mish got the front seat for the flight up (the chopper held 6 or 7 people) next to the pilot, so she took the photos for that ride.. It was my first helicopter experience – weird!  It just doesn’t feel right to have no run at it.. just straight up like an elevator…  It was a pretty quick trip, pretty far up the glacier, with just a couple nice turns to give us the feeling of a couple g’s.

Took in a view from above of a waterfall on the side of the glacier, that was pouring into a dark blue abyss..

Once we landed, we waited to the side as 2 or 3 more laps were done to bring up a few more people in our tour.. Got our steel spikes strapped onto our boots for walking on the ice.. then started our hike..

The bits of ice that were shot out when the chopper landed and took off were painful – everyone had to cover their face, else get pelted with ice pellets coming at you fast..

The guide was in short sleeves (not shorts – though other guides were in shorts) even though it was pretty cold out on the ice. He kept chopping up the ice to make it a little easier to walk on.. Chopping out stairs when we needed to climb or descend..

It was amazing stuff… A very slow moving river basically.. Apparently moving about a metre a day? Some years its receding, other years it expands.. Currently it was expanding.. All depends on the amount of snow fall at the top (a few miles up the mountain!).

He mentioned that if you slipped through one of the ‘holes’ where the water ran down (like this one pictured here), you would be dead in minutes.. You would likely plug up the hole, have freezing water pour over you, and you’d be frozen very quickly. Though it happened maybe once, that someone fell through, made it right down to the river at the bottom, and came out the end still alive – though hypothermic, and barely alive. One of the folks in our group asked if he would help us if we fell in – like maybe throw us a rope or something, and he simply said ‘nope. It’d be a waste of time. I’d just leave ya’.. He had a dry sense of humour! 😉

We have literally waay too many photos of the glacier, so I am trying hard to narrow down to just a few on this page..

We weren’t lucky enough to find any crevices to squeeze through, or massive caves to walk into, but we did get a small cave that couldn’t quite be crawled all the way through. The guide crawled through, but it was very slippery, so he didn’t let us go too far in. Still an amazing sight though.

A slight unfortunate part of our tour was that we had some slightly elderly / not so agile folks in our tour.. So I think the guide didn’t take us to some of the trickier places.. There was one couple that kept slipping and falling.. even with the walking sticks and steel spikes..

A panoramic from the top to the side..

After about 2 hours (that went by very very fast), we went back to the flattened spot of ice that was currently being used as the heli pad, and grabbed our lift back to the bottom of the mountain. I got the front seat on the way down, and took a short film..

 Thanks to having a camper, we had lunch in the parking lot (made some sandwiches and salad), then continued to head north.

We stopped off at the second Glacier in the area – Franz Joseph. It’s actually the more popular one apparently – so I’m happy we did the heli hike at Fox. We did see distant other hiking groups on the glacier, but I wouldn’t say it was crowded up there at all. Apparently Franz is a little more crowded. Apparently it’s a different glacier too, being steeper, it apparently has more jagged climbs and stuff.. but Fox was great. So we didn’t actually go right up to Franz.. We did the “Sentinel rock walk” for a distant view.

If you look carefully, you can see the levels and the years the glacier was at that level..

Then we continued driving up the coast.. Getting the polite 2 beep thanks when we let folks pass us in the zig zags. Just about everyone was polite that way..  Oh and the possums.. Possum road kills were everywhere on this trip.  You could tell they had a population problem. They were more common then squirrel road kills back home!

We headed inland a bit to check out Arthurs Pass, as it was supposed to be very beautiful, so even though it was out of our way, we wanted to get there. The rain was picking up again as we drove, but again, it was still beautiful. New Zealand in it’s natural state.

We decided to take photos on the return drive, so you’ll see them in ‘tomorrow’s slate’… But here is the route we took:

It was getting late before we got to the pass, so we spent the night at Lake Pearson… Great little spot for free, and only a couple others there. We went off roading a little with the camper, trying to get a remote spot.. But after nearly getting stuck trying to park, we didn’t want to chance it, so went back to the main area, and found a spot right on the shore.  It was maybe the best spot I have ever parked and spent the night.  The view out our camper window was inspiring.. And it was free! 😉

The pic above was actually the next morning, but I had to show it anyway.. A couple more will be in the next post..

We whipped up a great spaghetti with garlic bread, and some wine.. and feasted in this glorious spot. The bugs were still a little nuts, so we couldn’t do anything outside though.

When it got dark, it was Pitch black… I mean darker then I’ve ever experienced. It was a bit freaky really, and I bordered on panic attack just due to having no visibility when we turned out the lights to go to sleep. I was a little disoriented at times.. It didn’t matter if my eyes were open or closed – I could not see a single thing, no matter how close it was to my face.

Eventually I managed to pass out though, looking forward to seeing more mountainous landscapes, and then heading back to continue our drive up the coast.