Franz Josef Glacier

Glacier climbing, woot! THIS was awesome. The Franz Josef glacier and the Fox glacier (next mountain over) are two of three glaciers in the world that are right next to rain forests! (the third is in Patagonia) It’s pretty weird hiking through a rain forest and coming out to a giant slab of ice.

So we went with this tour company that we think are the only ones licensed to actually lead folks up on to the glacier. There were 66 people on the tour, which we were not terribly excited about. It turned out to be not so bad, but not so great either- the divvied us up into six different groups and spaced the groups out (or at least tried to) based on athletic ability. Group 1 was supposed to be the super gung-ho, we’re going to climb that bitch in an hour! Less than an hour! 10 minutes! While group six was supposed to be for the injured and elderly. We opted for group 6 straight away. (Mostly because we wanted to enjoy the experience and have time to take pictures, not just climb climb climb.) The best part of this- NO ONE wanted to be in group six. At one point I even asked the few other folks who joined us if anyone was actually injured and we all said no. And our group ended up overtaking group 4 at one point though, so that’s how that worked out. (Take that 4’s and 5’s!)

sexy crampons

Second best part of this was the Czech girl. This girl was forced into group six because she dislocated a shoulder three years ago and was honest about it on the injury form. (I said nothing about my car accident. And you know what? I could have gone in group 1 if I wanted. But I didn’t want. But I COULD.) Anyway, she did nothing but bitch about how she didn’t belong in group 6 and how slow we were going (even though we overtook the group that all of her friends (“friends” who ditched her when she was forced to go to group 6) were in. Then she didn’t listen to anything our guide, David said, kept messing up because of it and held our group up even more. And she kept getting stuck. Then, our guide said very specifically to follow is footsteps and she’d be right behind him forging her own trail not doing anything he saidand making the rest of us mess up because we were behind her. He even reamed her out at one point for not listening- it was hilarious. She was THAT girl. The silver lining though- she made the rest of the group bond pretty quickly! David was very cool and we made friends with some girls from Virginia/South Carolina who were really fun.

David's up front- Czech girl is right behind, plus our Virginia/S. Carolina buddies

Also hilarious (sort of?) was that the instant we got on the glacier, that’s when David decided to tell us about the overdue 8 point earthquake that Franz Josef was due to get. Really David? I didn’t want to be ON 30 million tons of ice when it was cracking off and falling, you know? David said not to worry- the bigger danger was rockslides from the mountains on either side of us. We weren’t actually worried though- we told him it would hit about two hours after we left the area. (Thankfully, it didn’t. We’d have been kicked out of New Zealand.)

Helpful Glacier Warning Sign

Anyway, great day! We had dinner with the girls from Virginia/South Carolina later that night and then hit the hay pretty early.

Rachel, me, JR, Polly, Shannon and Beth