After leaving the mountains of the South Island, we headed north up Lake Wanaka and then out to to the West Coast, to begin our trip north. The scenery along the way is wonderful and we pulled into Franz Josef just in time to enjoy dinner at the April May restaurant. We had a room for only one night in town and awoke the next morning amid a war zone – or so it sounded. The only way these days to actually walk on the snow fields of the two glaciers is via a helicopter, and the local entrepreneurs are taking full advantage of the opportunities created by global warming. For the three days we were around the glacier areas, there was a nonstop buzz of helicopters overhead – Adam would have loved it. That morning we drove back south to the Fox Glacier village and had coffee at Lake Matheson, the home of the twin mountains reflection photo, the one on all of the postcards. It’s a bit like the Maroon Bells shot. Everyone has to come here and try and take the perfect picture of Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman reflected in the lake. We actually didn’t take the one hour walk to the lake – just sat at the café and admired the beautiful view. We then headed over to walk up the access track to Fox Glacier. The DOC periodically moves the track to get you as close as possible to the terminal end but today we got a pretty good look at it. It was a hot, rocky walk with millions of tourists (Chinese New Year visitors apparently are swelling the ranks of NZ tourists this month). We then headed to the other side of the valley and went up the Chalet track, to another outlook of the glacier. This track is literally in a rainforest, which is odd because it was apparently the original track to take you up to the glacier, before global warming. When we started up the track, there was a bobcat-like thing and a couple of other pieces of equipment and a couple of guys working on the track. Somehow they had managed to get that bobcat all the way up the track, forded three or four streams, and made that track as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Now we know how they create these boulevards! But it was a lovely view of the glacier and a much more pleasant walk, though very humid.
This is the first short walk to the face of the Fox Glacier.
This is the Chalet track on the other side of the valley. Can you believe we are on our way to see a glacier?
This is not the sort of thing you expect to see when going to view a glacier.
At the end of the Chalet track was a viewing platform. This picture is looking down on the short hike we did before lunch.
From the Chalet track viewing platform, I took this closeup of the face of the glacier with my telephoto lens. And if you compare it with the first photo above, which I took on our first short walk, you will notice that there was a huge hunk of ice that came off between our two hikes. I had said to Barb, on our first hike that it looked like that block was about to come off. Well I guess it did! I’m sorry we missed it.
That night we headed about 45 north of the glacier to check into our next motel. Everything in the two glacier villages was booked, so we went up to a motel whose owners also run tours through a white heron nesting colony area. On arrival, they told us they were moving us to a house down the road. It turned out to be awful – old, tired, and dirty. It was bizarre. We were planning on staying there 4 nights but due to the lousy accommodations, cut it short to two nights.
We did not like this place at all. Old, tired and dirty.
On the South Island, there are a couple of chains of large supermarkets, and a large chain of very small supermarkets that can be found in all of the little towns – FourSquare. We had shopped there on our second day to get some basics for dinner. The following morning we drove back to Franz Josef and I noticed an email from FourSquare. It was intriguing as there was an attachment with a photo clearly taken from a surveillance camera at the store, showing Spencer and me in the store. The email asked if we had noticed anything missing after our visit to the store. Neither of us could think of anything but we stopped by the store to talk to the manager. She recognized us immediately and smiled and asked if we had dropped anything the day before. We said we weren’t aware of anything and asked what it might have been. She said that I had dropped $120 of cash as I put back my credit card in the wallet. She took us into the back office to show us the camera video and I could see something dropping. Apparently, she had clipped the photo, and sent it around to all of the accommodations in town, asking if anyone knew who the person in the photo was. She said they sometimes have to do this for shoplifters. Apparently the young man from our motel recognized me and sent her my email address and they tracked me down. Truly amazing. So after making a donation of some of the returned cash to the community fund box at the store counter, we headed off to see the next glacier. Once again, we headed up a similar access trail to see the Franz Josef glacier terminus, and this track had a number of lovely waterfalls before reaching the end of the trail. NZ has so many beautiful waterfalls that Spencer and I now smirk as we go by and say, “Just another stinky, beautiful New Zealand waterfall.” On our way back to the house, we stopped at Okarito beach and took a very nice walk next to the Tasman Sea – next stop Australia!
The Franz Josef glacier as we approached.
This is pretty much what most of the hike was like.
View of the Franz Josef.
If you want to see these glaciers you had better hurry. They are retreating at an amazing rate.
Ho hum, more beautiful waterfalls.
The same falls as above just a wider angle.
The track went up over what appeared to be a large mound of rock. It turned out the mound was ice covered in rock. Pretty neat!
Okarito beach
The next day, we checked out and went back down to Franz Josef, to hike the Alex Knob track. It was supposed to be an 8 hour hike, but we made it in 8 1/2 hours, after additionally visiting Betty’s Knob, or Bob Knob, or Jerry’s Knob – it was definitely not-Alex Knob. But we were clearly not the only hikers to make that incorrect right hand turn and we eventually made it up to the real knob. This was a really challenging hike for us, going up one of the mountains that once flanked the Franz Josef Glacier. It was no boulevard – rocky, wet, lots of roots, and lots of scrambling with hands involved. There were many, many 3 – 5 foot walls to clamber up/down and at one point on the way down, I slipped on a root when trying to maneuver down one of these and ended up like the proverbial turtle, tied up in roots with all four limbs flailing in the air, while my calf objected with a might charlie horse. Both Spencer and I got covered in mud trying to extricate me and my pack from this dilemma, but besides that, only my dignity was injured. This track happened to be right in the flight path of all of the helicopters taking all of the tourists to the snowfield, so there was a constant buzz, at first right overhead, then gradually below us until finally we couldn’t see them as we entered the cloud cover. There were two midway outlooks of the glacier where we had wonderful views of the top of the glacier, which couldn’t be seen from the tourist walkway below. When we finally found the real Alex Knob, around 3 p.m., we were in the clouds. So we stopped and ate some food and started to pack up to head down. Just as we were about to leave, the clouds parted and we got a wonderful look a the glacier, windowed by clouds on either side. Just spectacular. We finally made it back to the car around 7 p.m. and went back for another great meal at Alice May. We then drove north to Hokitika, our first significant night drive, and arrived at a lovely cottage for the night.
Trail marker at the start of the Alex Knob track.
As Barb said, this track goes right under the helicopter route.
This is pretty much what the whole track looked like. It was a challenging hike.
View of the Franz Josef Glacier at the second viewing point “Christmas Point”.
There were these beautiful, delicate, little white flowers that started appearing as we approached the top of the climb.
This video is from the wrong knob. As Barb said we took a wrong turn when we were close to the top. But what a lovely view. 🙂
Once we figured out where we had gone wrong, we climbed to the REAL Alex Knob. Our view there was no better, until……
…. the music swelled, the clouds parted and we got a glimpse of the top of the sunlit glacier. It was brief, only about 5 minutes. Then the clouds closed up and we felt it was a sign that we should start down. 🙂 It was our most challenging hike but I think we both really enjoyed it.