Through the Southern Alps to Glacier Country

Today we had a fairly serious drive to do - you could tell that when, an hour in, the sat nav announced as we turned on to Highway 6 'follow the road for 294km to your destination'!  The first part of the trip from Queenstown to Wanaka was in sunshine and followed a scenic route through the mountains.  The road had been subject to a couple of rock slides and bits were being repaired.  Unlike home, we turned one corner to find a bulldozer and a road sweeper lorry in the middle of the road - no coning off here.  We then had a run along the lakes to the east of the mountains before climbing to go through a pass and down to the west coast.  As we got to the mountains, we found the rain that had been forecast and it did not leave us until about 7.30 this evening.  We drove to Fox Glacier and, as the rain was not much more than a misty drizzle at that point decided that we would walk to the glacier face.



A potential Helen Money moment - remember Dovedale?



From the viewing point (c100m)



It is about a kilometre and a half's walk along the valley, over streams and up the rocks to get to the viewing area - everywhere there are warnings as to rock slides and the like.  In today's gloomy weather, one could see how things get washed down the sides of the steep valley and, potentially, hit people.  The scale of the glacier is quite something to see.  The ice we were looking at is probably in the milions of years old and one gets a mix of blues and whites in the main flow (it is a bit grey round the edges where it is eroding the rocks).  The face advances some 5 years after a heavy snowfall at the seat of the glacier (it takes that long for the effects to be translated down the length of the valley).  The walk up and down is easy - they recommend walking boots or stout footwear but, to back-packers and some visitors that appeared to equate to a pair of flip-flops.

We then went on to Franz Josef where our accommodation is.  As it is so wet, we spent a while doing some laundry (very exciting) and trying to book a trip on to the Fox Josef Glacier for tomorrow (which we achieved).  We are hoping that the weather is a bit kinder tomorrow.