Post from Tim:
"Around the corner and up the stairs." We followed a few stragglers into the small equipment room at The Guiding Company, blurted out our shoe sizes, and received mean pairs of clunky boots soled with grimacing metal teeth. While I secretly wanted a pair of these to walk around town in, the guides had other plans. Today we were hiking the Franz Josef Glacier.
After a short bus ride, we started down a trail surrounded by rainforest vegetation. While it didn't seem right that just 2 km away a river of ice flowed down the mountain, our guide explained how the Franz Josef is one of only five temperate glaciers in the world. (The Fox Glacier is another, conveniently located just 30 minutes south of this one.) When we made our way out of the forest and on to the glacial valley, the enormity of the valley and glacier blew away my sense of scale. I could see small blocks of ice at the top. What looked like a 10 meter wall in my eyes actually measured 200 meters! A helicopter hovering near the top was barely visible.
The walk across the valley and to the terminal face looked much shorter than it was. We stepped over the smooth rocks of the valley floor, crossed glacial streams, and stopped at a point about halfway to the glacier. The guide then explained the steps of glacier formation. First, years of snow gathers in a funnel-like snowfield at the top of the mountain (névé). Then, pressure from the accumulated snow turns the bottom layers into blue ice - which is under so much pressure that the ice actually becomes flexible and begins to flow downhill. The ice flows down the valley as a glacier (icefall) and melts in the ablation zone. The length of the glacier changes from year to year, depending on long-term weather trends. If we were standing in the middle of the valley just 250 years ago, we would have been under 300 meters of ice!
My time finally came - I strapped on my mean shoes and dug into the ice. We started up a set of stairs carved into the glacier and hiked to an ice cave. Michelle and I entered together. Inside the cave, soft blue light radiated from the ice of the curvy walls. It was very quiet. I could hear nothing but the dripping from melting ice. The cave was so peaceful and mysterious that I could have remained there for hours.
But I continued up the glacier with the group. We passed boulders that lay tossed about like pebbles. Deep crevasses cut through the ice. As another treat, we climbed down and wriggled through one of the more shallow crevasses. Eventually, we made it to a plateau in the glacier. We were nowhere near the top, but the view was gigantically spectacular. I stood, trying to comprehend the eons it takes to carve out a valley and wondered at the power of what I was standing on.
After a short bus ride, we started down a trail surrounded by rainforest vegetation. While it didn't seem right that just 2 km away a river of ice flowed down the mountain, our guide explained how the Franz Josef is one of only five temperate glaciers in the world. (The Fox Glacier is another, conveniently located just 30 minutes south of this one.) When we made our way out of the forest and on to the glacial valley, the enormity of the valley and glacier blew away my sense of scale. I could see small blocks of ice at the top. What looked like a 10 meter wall in my eyes actually measured 200 meters! A helicopter hovering near the top was barely visible.
The walk across the valley and to the terminal face looked much shorter than it was. We stepped over the smooth rocks of the valley floor, crossed glacial streams, and stopped at a point about halfway to the glacier. The guide then explained the steps of glacier formation. First, years of snow gathers in a funnel-like snowfield at the top of the mountain (névé). Then, pressure from the accumulated snow turns the bottom layers into blue ice - which is under so much pressure that the ice actually becomes flexible and begins to flow downhill. The ice flows down the valley as a glacier (icefall) and melts in the ablation zone. The length of the glacier changes from year to year, depending on long-term weather trends. If we were standing in the middle of the valley just 250 years ago, we would have been under 300 meters of ice!
My time finally came - I strapped on my mean shoes and dug into the ice. We started up a set of stairs carved into the glacier and hiked to an ice cave. Michelle and I entered together. Inside the cave, soft blue light radiated from the ice of the curvy walls. It was very quiet. I could hear nothing but the dripping from melting ice. The cave was so peaceful and mysterious that I could have remained there for hours.
But I continued up the glacier with the group. We passed boulders that lay tossed about like pebbles. Deep crevasses cut through the ice. As another treat, we climbed down and wriggled through one of the more shallow crevasses. Eventually, we made it to a plateau in the glacier. We were nowhere near the top, but the view was gigantically spectacular. I stood, trying to comprehend the eons it takes to carve out a valley and wondered at the power of what I was standing on.
Photos From This Location
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- Other stories from Month 3