NEW ZEALAND (S.) - FRANZ JOSEF...Glacier Trek Turn-around

It was another rainy, cool and windy day of travel, but much shorter. We arrived in Franz Josef mid-day and quickly dropped our bags, made day-packs, and took off for a ½ day glacier trek. This would be yet another attempt at actually getting onto a glacier… after taking a 3-hour nap at the foot of the glacier in Bolivia last year, due to altitude sickness, and other challenges prior to that . We hiked about 1 hour in to the foot of the Franz Josef Glacier – enduring rain, sleet, snow and a thunderstorm (a new experience to have thunder & lightning at the same time as it was snowing!) along the entire journey. We froze our fingers strapping on our cramp-ons, while on a flat surface just in front of a very cool ice cave. We began our journey up the ice walls, clinging to loop-knotted rope lines along the way… and wouldn’t you know – less than a minute into being on top of the first part of the glacier, base called all of us back due to the crazy winter storm heightening. I couldn’t do anything but laugh – I am just not meant to trek on the tops of glaciers, I suppose! We had a very hurried rush back to meet the buses at the trailhead, before getting snowed in, so we ducked our way under the heavily snow-coated branches that now drooped over the simple trail we had just come from an hour earlier! It was wild! We got rid of all our wet gear and filled ourselves with some warm hot chocolate… ‘sunshine’ on a cloudy-grey day!

Anna, Emily and I raced back to Chateau Franz (our hostel) to snag spots in the 4-man hot tub before the 6:00 soup hour! Hot tubs, hot showers, hot soup and a fabulous room heater – all was good! …and entertaining, as our 3 Malaysian dorm-mates were on a different time schedule from us!