There are lots of thrilling, expensive activities in Queenstown. Skiing, of course, as well as bungy jumping, jetboating, paragliding, skydiving, etc. Josie and I chose to play frisbee golf instead. We got all the thrill we needed last weekend when we hiked on Fox Glacier.
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| From Fox Glacier |
Fox Glacier is on the west coast of the South Island, and is the third-longest glacier in New Zealand. It's hard to appreciate how large it is just by looking at a picture. It stretches 13 km from top to bottom. Most of the glacier is permanently shadowed by the surrounding mountains.
We went with a tour group. Our guide was a young Australian named Deane. There were six others in our group. We had to walk up a trail through the woods to actually get to the access point to the glacier. It took about an hour and a half. Once on the ice, there were paths and nice stairways cut into the ice with chainsaws. I thought that was great. Some of the steeper stairs had ropes.
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| From Fox Glacier |
Deane took us first to the lower portion of the glacier. Here there were no carved steps. There was an obvious path where other groups had traveled before us. We got to climb through an ice tunnel and even had to squeeze through a narrow crevasse. I thought I just barely managed to wriggle through it.
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| From Fox Glacier |
We stopped for a nice lunch around 1. Deane had brought hot cocoa in a thermos. It was pleasant.
After lunch we headed up toward the top of the glacier. Not surprisingly, the climb up was tougher than the climb down. As I got more and more tired, I found it difficult to concentrate on correct stomping technique to properly dig the spikes of my crampons into the ice. Then my left crampon fell off. I got it back on with help. Deane decided that instead of sticking to the already-tramped path, we were going to forge a new path.
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| From Fox Glacier |
To bring a group to an untravelled portion of the glacier, the guide must first choose an appropriate path. If necessary, the guide must take an axe to the ice to create stairs up or down the steep ice slopes. Once the guide has chosen a path, you really have no choice but to follow, no matter how dangerous it looks. No matter if your crampon falls off again. Even if the guide decides to lead the group on a particular slope so perilous that he has to lead each person in the group through the path one-by-one. Bend your knees as you're walking down a steep traverse and trust the crampons (even the one that fell off twice) to hold your weight.
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| From Fox Glacier |
I did weigh my options. If you break your leg on the ice, you get a helicopter ride back. However, I wasn't confident that I could successfully break a leg without also falling to my doom into one of the deep crevasses that awaited us at the bottom of each slope.
As Deane helped me with my crampon the second time it fell off, I asked how much longer it would be before we got back to the glacier entrance. He said we had maybe 10 minutes more on the ice. An hour later, Deane was walking far ahead of us, trying to figure out how to get us back, while we loitered around on a safe-ish plateau. He came back and told us, encouragingly, that he saw the other group and that the end was just beyond the next peak. By this time all I could think of was getting back to the hostel and opening a bottle of shiraz.
We did eventually get off the ice. It was the most excited I'd ever been to step into muddy dirt. Although I had feared for my knees and ankles while on the glacier, I managed not to twist or sprain anything.
So that was my extreme sport adventure. I don't feel the need to do any death-defying activities like bungy jumping. Not that I ever did. In a couple of days Josie and I are going to go sea kayaking in Milford Sound with a tour group, instead of taking a cruise boat like normal people do. I'm going to let the guide know that I'd prefer that he just stick to the company-approved route.
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| From Fox Glacier |
1 comment:
It looks gorgeous! But there's nothing like getting the "impromptu" experience choice from the guide. I might have put my crampon into his foot "accidentally"... then maybe you'd all be airlifted out. Did you ever get the glass of wine in your hotel afterwards?
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