On Top of the World

My trip to the Franz Josef Glacier took me deep into the Westcoast region and the 8 hour busride passed by white beaches, rainforests, snowcapped mountains and... glaciers. It's like a microworld this little island. Everything you can possibly think of is right here on the westcoast.

Franz Josef Glacier is the steepest commercially climbable glacier in the world. And it's an impressive 12 kilometers long. When we first approached it I thought "piece of cake", until my guide told me to take out my camera and zoom in on the face of the glacier. My jaw dropped as quickly as my confidence did:

-Franz Josef upon our approach through the valley -

- Face of Franz Josef with zoom (people!) -

While I've climbed a glacier once before in Norway, the glacier there was retreating. Franz Josef on the other hand is actually growing at a rate of half a meter a day. A DAY! When you set off in the morning, the glacier will have physically shifted forward by the time you make your way back down in the evening. It's difficult to trace that growth while you're climbing, but you can hear the ominous rumbling and creaking of the glacier under its own growth. It's eerie and demands respect in a way only nature can.

We managed to get 6 kilometers into the glacier (about halfway) and our guide took us through several "wormholes", cavities which are formed when water seeps through the ice for a prolongued period of time.

- Into the Wormhole -

The Glacier appears blue there where the ice is packed most densely. Blue light (which has the shortest wavelength of all visible light) gets reflected while all the other colours of the spectrum are absorbed. Keas, abundant on glaciers and in the surrounding rainforests, are capable of seeing UV light, so to them, the glaciers will look blue and UV-coloured.

The Maori name for Franz Josef is: Ka roimata O Hine Hukatere, which means "Tears of the Avalanche Girl". According to moari legend, a girl called Hine was crazy about mountaineering. Her boyfriend prefered the beach, but to please her, he decided to accompany her on one of her mountaineering treks. When they reached the summit, he accidentally plunged to his death off the cliffs. Hine was inconsolable and cried for days. The gods didn't quite know what to do with all her grief, so they decided to freeze her tears as a constant reminder of what happened. Those frozen tears now make up the glacier.

- Checking out crevasses -