Today was a really cool day. Although I have seen glaciers in several locations (Glacier National Park, Alaska, and in the Canadian Rockies), I have never walked on more than the edge of one. Today we scheduled a full day hike on the FJ glacier, a 12 km glacier whose face terminates only 240 meters above sea level. It and the nearby Fox glacier are 2 of only three glaciers which occur at this southern latitude (the other one is in Argentina). Currently the glacier is advancing at a rate of about 15 centimeters a day. It is maintained by the massive rain and snowfall on its face; the record for one season snowfall at Franz Josef is 80 meters!! (average is around 40).
We arrived at the center are were equipped with over trousers, waterproof coats, hats, gloves, boots, and crampons. The crampons are sized to fit each size of rubber boots (which unfortunately weren't that comfortable). I didn't wind up wearing either the coat or pants, but it was nice to have them anyway. A bus takes us to the glacier field, and it is a 40 minute walk through a temperate rainforest and along a river bed to arrive at the glacier's base. At this point we put on our crampons, and divided into 4 groups.
The ascent onto the glacier is via a staircase with a guide rope. The guides are responsible for cutting steps with their ice axes in the steep parts, and it is not as easy as it looks. The first steps are large enough to walk up normally, but subsequent staircases were ascended or descended via the "Franz" in which you stand sideways and swing your free leg either in front or behind your standing leg and onto the next step. Once I got the hang of it, this was actually really fun.
Walking with crampons is also really fun (and it makes you feel cool). They're very useful for walking through all sorts of terrain up there, especially the loose ice. There were a number of crevasses which needed to be traversed via stairs and guide ropes. These crossings were definitely the bottleneck of our journey because only one person can go at a time and there were 44 people among the 4 groups doing day long hikes. Several girls in my group also provided a bottleneck. I couldn't tell if they were totally incompetent, or just frightened of everything.
The strangest part of the journey involved squirming through an ice cave, or wormhole. The ice in there is the beautiful bright blue usually associated with glaciers. It was also very slick and a little too close for comfort. It was an awesome experience, though. We almost made it to the top of the first ice fall (the 2 fastest groups did), which is further than they usually get. The views both down the glacier (to the ocean beyond) and up the glacier (to 2 other ice falls) were quite impressive.
Although I am a bit tired now and will probably be quite sore tomorrow, this trek was absolutely worthwhile. If I had time, I would visit the indoor ice climbing cave in town. I mean, how cool is that?
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