I’ve spent most of the past four days around snow, for a change. After leaving the rainforests of the upper west coast of New Zealand’s South Island, I headed south to where a few glaciers can be visited: the Franz Josef Glacier and the Fox Glacier. I hiked up to the nose of the Franz Josef Glacier and touched it. It was very blue in parts and full of small rocks and pebbles (which give it its dirty appearance).
Hiking up to the nose of a glacier is not the safest thing in the world to do since they’re continually melting and collapsing at the bottom, but the “experts” were leading tour groups up onto the glaciers from the same point, so most hikers assumed it had to be safe enough — even though there were signs everywhere warning you not to go near it.
It was raining when I hiked up to the Franz Josef Glacier. One of the coolest things that happens when it rains is the sudden swelling of the streams running off the neighbouring mountains. One in particular had a constant flow of water coming out of it, but about five minutes after a downpour, it would sound like a jet engine spewing all the runoff that couldn’t be absorbed into the rock.
