Initially we wanted to stay one more night at Lake Wanaka, but thinking about the journey we have to travel from Lake Wanaka to Fox Glaciers sort of scared us a little. We drove half the distance to Haast Pass which is so beautiful!
Because Haast doesn't have much to see, we arrived at Fox Glacier pretty early the next day. We went straight to the glaciers because it is located just before the town center.
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| Glaciers |
You could join a tour where they are able to bring you right up on the ice and this happens all year round! The glacier is just one massive chunk of ice that is slowly melting over the years. We went up their ourselves as it is free and there's a dirt path paved out for you to slowly trek up. Of course, since we were on our own, we had to stick to the path and not go wandering past the barriers.
The land where the glaciers are located is sandwiched between the sea and the highest mountains in New Zealand. Warm, moist air travelling from Australia drops snow in the higher elevations of the Southern Alps, piling it up to form large neves or snowfields. Gravity then squeezes it down the valley as if it were toothpaste and the once fluffy snowflakes are compressed into hard blue ice. The valleys are so steep and narrow that the tongues of ice have pushed far down into rainforest and not much above sea level. The forces generated by the moving tongue of ice grinds away at everything in its path to reach the terminal face at the front of the glacier. A glacier likes to find equilibrium, where the amount of ice produced in the neve is equal to the amount of ice lost to melting in its tongue. This results in the dramatic advances and retreats of the terminal face of the two glaciers.
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| lake at the bottom of the glaciers |
From where I was standing, you could see where the "lake/river" used to be. There were small streams running from the glaciers and I suppose it will fill up in the summer when the glaciers melt much rapidly. At one point, we had to cross a small, but fast and rapid stream. It's not that deep if you fall in it, maybe about shin high. However, you may loose your footing and get pushed down the stream in the current. There were large rocks in it for you to step over to cross the stream and I didn't want my shoes to get wet and I was scared. We spent a good 15 mins there trying to cross it.
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| Trying to be funny |
There are numerous signs along the path to the glaciers warning you of rock or ice fall. The rangers change the path up to the glaciers once in a while when they deem the path too dangerous to trek or there's potential ice or rock fall. The view could very much be different if I were to go back in 5 years time!
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| Info about the glaciers |
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| Why you shouldn't go past the glaciers |
You might be surprised to find that snow rarely falls in Franz Josef and Fox Glacier townships - but a whole lot of it falls in the nearby mountains, just what a glacier needs to produce ice. This ice pushes down the steep valleys into the forest, meaning you don't have to walk far to see an amazing West Coast ice cube.
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| Fox Glacier! |
Because we were in a valley to see the glacier, the rain clouds were upon us once we were at the peak. We had 1km of gravel, rocks and dirt to trek down. We obviously got quite drenched. Once we reached the carpark though, the rain stopped.
We went into the town center and realized that the town is actually very small and there's not much amenities. We drove straight to Franz Joself then because our guide book mentioned that there's a larger village as compared to Fox Glacier.
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