Day 158 - Franz Josef Glacier Hike

I headed over to the Franz Josef Glacier Guides center and it was raining like mad and I'm quite sure it's not going to clear up any time soon. I guess I'll be hiking in the rain. I was layered up but the boots I was given were still wet from the day before as it has rained here for the last 3-4 days. There is nothing more uncomfortable than putting your foot into a boot that many other people have worn but it also happened to be dripping wet. I couldn't think about it, even though it totally disgusted me.

We took a bus for about 20 min to the area of the Franz Josef Glacier. It was still raining really hard and took about 45 min hiking through the rainforest to get to the bottom of the glacier. We were split up into groups and started our hike up. The crampons for the boots were phenomenal. What a great invention! There will be no falling on this glacier! For the first 10-20 min the hike was quite strenuous but after sometime it was fine. We hiked up by the blue ice and through the ice crevices. It was absolutely brilliant. Definitely the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. We continued to hike and ended up at the highest point at about 2000m at 3pm. It took another 1 1/2 hours to get down while our guide was cutting steps into the glacier with an ice axe.

This is considered a warm glacier so it's always wet and has water running through it. It has receded greatly over the last 200 years and seems to continue to do so. It was absolutely brilliant to be on it.