26th November 2009
Glorious blue skies (although still cloudy over the mountains) at 7am this morning, so we were up and off, back to Franz Joseph for our walk to hopefully get some clear views of the glacier before the cloud cover came in.
Not surprisingly, the glacier was even more spectacular with the blue sky backdrop than it was yesterday covered in grey cloud, so we set off.
The walk started as an easy gravel path to Peter’s Pool, this is a kettle pool formed when a block of ice is left behind by a retreating glacier and the foliage grows around it. Not quite still enough to get a perfect reflection of the glacier and the mountains. We continued on through native rainforest before arriving at our first, long swing brige crossing the river floor.
After this, things started to get a little more challenging, walking up (not so dry) streams and through muddy pools, still surrounded by ferns and mossy trees. After about an hour tramping through the forest we reached a DOC sign which said that only experienced or guided hikers should continue. Well, since we’d already walked an hour we weren’t going to give up that easily. Further inspection revealed a rock fall on the path, but we carefully made our way round it and downwards to the valley floor again.
From here the path became more tricky, crossing waterfalls gushing with water from last nights rain, carefully climbing up wet rocks and making our way round wet cliffs using the ‘Elf steps’.
Towards the end we were so tired of looking at our feet to make sure we didn’t slip and fall, we just wanted to get to the viewpoint. When we did, we were rewarded with stunning views right over the glacier (and we’d beaten the cloud) - well worth it. There were only about 15 of us at the top, some of whom had raced past us further down, some of whom we had past, but with it being a trek advertised for experienced and well-equipped hikers (we found this out later on) it’s hardly surprising it wasn’t really busy.
We were justifiably tired when we got back to the campervan at the car park, and in dire need of a warm shower. We still wanted to check out Fox Glacier but didnt have the energy to do so today, so we headed back to the place we stayed last night, knowing they had fantastic showers and were only five minutes from the glacier so we could visit on our way out of town tomorrow.