Great Kiwi Road Trip: Day 7 - Fox glacier, Haast, Wanaka (Part 1)

Night scenery at Franz Josef

It was another early departure today, as we going to drive through another 19KM winding road from Franz Josef to Fox Glacier.  Though both Franz Josef and Fox glacier offer unique experience of glacier tour on the World’s only glacier surrounded by green forest lushes, we chose Fox glacier because most tourists commented that it gives more spectacular view of glaciers and less crowded than Franz Josef.

Geared up and ready for the coolest glacier trekking experience!

We made a short stop at the face of Franz Josef glacier before proceed our way to Fox glacier. The coolest thing about the NZ’s glaciers, are they flow almost to sea level and make them well-known to be the only few glaciers in the world can be accessible easily from the township nearby. The visitors can easily walk almost right up to the faces of these glaciers on their own, they still need an experience guided tour for walking out onto the ice. It is a very dangerous act to walk on the ice without guided, as many people have died from failing off the glaciers. We only stood outside to see the face of Franz Josef glacier at the entrance, then we continued our drive to Fox glacier which is another 20 minutes away from the town.

We need to walk through this full of rocks-path for 45 min - 1 hour before to step on the glacier

Fox glacier has offered the guided glacier tour since 1930s. The glaciers are formed when rains turned into snow at the 3000 meter of barriers of Southern Alps. These snows accumulated over the years and compressed into ice, forming the 13 KM river of ice known as today’s Fox glacier. As the snowfall continue increasing, the glacier continue to advance and thus, it has retreated rapidly down the valley and far into the mountain. This makes it as one of the few glaciers in the world that is so close to the rainforest and at only 250-300 metres above sea level.

As we showed up to the office, we were suited up with their provided gears: a rain jacket, boots, crampons and backpacks. They also provide the socks, hats, overtrousers and gloves. Our guide is a Texan boy, after a brief introduction about the safety rule on glacier, we moved on to board the bus which transferred us to the entrance of the Fox glacier face. First, we need to hike for about 45 minutes as we walked through the valley. The path is mainly formed by the mixture of huge rock and soils, and part of it was made after the rock fall from the hill. 

Professional glacier hiker?! LOL

We moved relatively fast and though with a small group of 8 of us, our guide was very strict with the timing. He did give many useful explanations about how the glacier is formed during every pit stop. I think that’s different culture between our Asian and them, as we are keen to take picture in whenever any chance we could, they tend to stay and listen to the guide’s introduction most of the time. That Texan guide must be very “sien” to us, when seen us taking for picture while he was trying his best to keep us understand the safety, and everything about this glacier. LOL.

Fox glaciers

It wasn't that cold actually, and we even sweating inside due to the heavy walking!

As we approached to the face of glacier, we put our crampons on and together with the provided walking stick, off we stepped on the ice for the first time in our life. It is a huge crystal blue ice cube, and our guide wanted us to step as hard as possible when we walk on the glacier. This is to make sure we won’t fall down from slippery on the ice. It was an amazing experience!

U-shape ice curve formed naturally by the moving glacier

I love that tour! It was so much fun.

We spent about 1 hour on the glacier, and had the chance to see two naturally-formed ice caves. We were told that as the glacier advancing every day, the ice cave we have seen today might not be here tomorrow. 

Another unique ice cave. 

We followed the same old path back to the Fox glacier meeting point, till there we bid goodbye to the glacier, and hopefully, if there is chance someday we should try for  Full-day glacier tour.

On our way back, we were lucky to see this parrot, known as Kea. It is another endangered species that only can be found in alpine areas of South Island, NZ.

Followed same path back to the assembly site. 

Panoramic view of glacier and its surrounding

We moved on to visit the Lake Matheson, the lake which famous for its incredible view of the reflection of snow-capped Mt. Cook in the dark waters. (to be continued)