Fox Glacier

We got the bus to Fox Glacier after the cold nights sleep, it was only about 30minutes down the road. The half day hike was booked for 1:45pm and we were in FG at 8:30 with no room ready in the hostel until 12:30, we scratched our heads and thought “hmmm I wonder if we could get on the earlier hike at 9:15am” We went into the Hike center and they said no problem. Lisa pointed out a warning card on to me regarding people who suffer from vertigo, it said the hike involved some points along the hike where u are walking along holding a chain with a 300 foot vertical drop beside you and to inform your guide before setting off. Now more than two pairs of socks on (as my day would say) and I’m starting to get scared, needless to say I was getting quite anxious. Although Lisa was reassuring me it was ok and I knew it was ok as I have gotten quite used to pushing myself to face my fear of heights quite regularly it still plays on my mind. Anyway we went through to the boot room at 9:15 and met with our gnome-like mountaineer guide. He talked us through what we would be doing, what we should be wearing and to use as many pairs of socks as we liked to get comfy in their hiking boots. We set off in an old bus thingy up to the car park of the Fox Glacier. Apparently the car park is over a massive piece of ice and recently they had to re make it with a huge steel base to stop it becoming submerged. FG is much easier to access than FJG and equally if not more impressive, as your very near the terminal face of it. We set off in two groups of 13. Our group had the gnome guy Chris and the others had some younger lad. Chris was quite funny cracking jokes about the Irish here and there along the way. When we were telling Chris where we were from a guy beside us said “Ireland? No way I’m from Dublin”. His name was Ger and from Rathmines, we waffled our way up to the Glacier with Ger and the guide. It wasn’t as physically demanding as we imagined. Eventually we got up to the scary height bit, where we had to climb up a ladder then grab a chain and ease our way along the rockface slowly, always keeping one hand on the chain. This was no where near as bad as I thought it was gonna be. I had told him I was scared of some heights so he moved me to the front with the two old biddies who were also scared lol.

After about ten more minutes we reached the Glacier – It was so impressive. Huge in size and beautiful in colors, from white ice with bits of rock to deep blue crevices. We attached our crampons to our boots, grabbed a walking stick and proceeded onto the Glacier. On the Glacier its considerably more cold and you have to walk flat footed stamping your feet into the ice to make sure u don’t slip down a crevice or something. The views from on top the Glacier were amazing. We hiked around the top for about an hour with the guides explaining various things about the Glacier, how it’s formed, how fast its moving (about 1 meter a week) and in what direction (depending on snowfall / melt). It was much easier getting down from the Glaciar and the mountain side. We even got to hear a big piece of ice falling off the front – it sounded like thunder. We were on a high after the trip and went with Ger in his spaceship (rental car u can sleep in and contains a dvd player, cooker etc) to get a nice big unhealthy breakfast/lunch. I had the al day breakfast, which was soooooooooooooooooooo nice!! Lisa had eggs on toast, that looked yum and Ger had a bacon butty. Ger dropped us back to town after swapping email addresses and arranging to meet the following night in Queenstown. We spent the rest of the day checking our mail, cooking and relaxing in the hostel.