Heli Hike on the Franz Joseph Glacier

Monday, January 11th. PM

Again we were given a briefing about the safety rules and regulations before being kitted up with boots, pants, jacket and crampon bag. Then we were led on a five minute walk through some beautiful rainforest to the helicopter pad. They were shuttling groups of five people in each helicopter in rapid fashion. The flight to the glacier took about ten minutes. We landed up past the leading edge of the glacier as that is unstable and moving and melting quickly. After attaching our crampons to our boots our leader Ollie guided us on a hike up the glacier, around crevasses, and up and down stairs that had been cut out by all the guides. He continually used his axe to pick away at the trail and stairs and clean away the loose ice.

At the furthest place up the glacier we walked or crawled through three ice caves, one of which was very narrow and tricky to negotiate. We had fun taking photos of each other. The whole hike lasted about three hours and then we were loaded back on the helicopter and flown back down to Franz Joseph. Again we walked back through that beautiful rainforest to their headquarters where we changed back into our clothes and walked back to the hotel.

When we got there we met Medi and the four of us decided to go for a hike that Max had told us about called Callery Gorge. It was a nice hike through the beautiful rainforest to a gorge carved by a river. On the way back Jan Eric and I decided to do the other hike which is called Tatare Tunnels. Again it was a hilly gentle hike up to a man made 500 metre tunnel that they used for channeling water in the gold rush days. Today it is inhabited with glow worms that glow in the dark when you turn off your torch. I arrived back at the hotel just in time to have a quick shower and then join the group at the Chinese restaurant TigerKing. Then we went back to the bar at our hotel for one more drink before calling it a night. What an incredible day! It's going to be hard to top it. The weather could not have been better for us today, blue skies and little wind. We were able to do both flights which are often cancelled because of inclement weather.