The best places are cold
Trip Start
Mar 23, 2007
1
137
Trip End
Sep 15, 2008
Franz Josef, South Island, New Zealand
Sunday, July 27, 2008
The day was not warm - but it was as warm as it was going to be with the sun shining and a few light wisps of clouds giving us a natural SPF here in the Southern Hemisphere. The sun definitely comes up, however the light is strange. It feels like late afternoon starting at about 11am. The sun is setting all day. It never gets high enough and casts long shadows.
And it was under this morning setting sun Ben and I donned on a few layers, our gloves and hats setting off on another cold weather adventure. As we walked through the vacant streets of Franz Josef, little clouds of breath crystallized in front of us. We were reminded of Pucon Chile. Here we were half way around the world and a year and a half later and we were pulling on snowpants and crampons once again.
We hiked through the rainforest which brought us to the terminal moraine of this glacier. Like the Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina this glacier is advancing and is uniquely found in a temperate rainforest like environment. It was impressive. The great river of us before us seemed huge, the walls of ice could swallow us whole and yet we were looking at about 1/6 of the entire glacier.
About half way up our day on the ice if you stopped and looked around here is what you would see: in the distance you could just make out the ocean, the cold and calm Tasman Sea as it hit the western edge of New Zealand. Large craggy snowcapped peaks surrounded us on the other 3 sides and waterfalls cascaded to the ground far far below. The ice was a deep blue. We felt like we were walking through another world or a casle made of ice. The world around us looked like a blueberry icee. All we could hear was the waterfall, the wind, and the crunch of the ice as we stepped deliberately. Sitting there munching a peanut butter sandwich feeling so small amidst this large icefall - life never felt bigger.
