FRANZ JOSEF

Ice Ice Baby! Our next challenge was to enter an incredible world of ice. The Franz Josef glacier was known to the Maori as ‘Ka Roimata o Hine Hukatere’ , which means ‘Tears of the Avalanche Girl’. The old legend is that of a girl who lost her lover from the local peaks, and the glacier being her flood of tears. This is the glacier that we were about to experience.

After gearing up with a big warm Rain jacket, sturdy boots, crampons (in our lovely red bum-bag) and of cause our hats and gloves, we were ready to go!

Walking down and climbing some very slippery ice…

At times it was a tight squeeze as we found some brilliant ice caves. The ice was ‘glowing’ bright blue the further down we went…

Sometimes I made some unnecessary but extremely fun squeezes…

But we always got out safe and sound…

To give you a feel of how far down we went at times…

But, I did make it to the top!

I obviously did not make it to the top of the glacier, do not be silly. The glacier is enormous! But we managed to get very far up (as far as it was safe for us). It was an great experience, and one of my favourite adventures. After the full day of climbing on the cold glacier, we went to the Glacier Hot Pools, which was nestled outside in the rainforest, it was so warm and relaxing.