We had made a reservation at Montrose Backpackers by phone earlier that day, but the girl behind the counter, new to her post, had put us in for the wrong day. No more dorm beds were available. This worked to our benefit, however, as the manager offered us a double at the dorm rate, not only for the night in question but for both nights of our stay. Walking in and plopping down on a big comfy bed, our own bathroom situated mere feet away, we counted ourselves very lucky.
That evening, Franca went out for wine, leaving me to cook on my own for the first time. My fish curry didn't quite measure up to hers, but it was passable, and I felt quite proud.
After chatting with some recent Dartmouth grads and running into yet another traveler I had previously met in Sucre, Bolivia, of all places, we called it a night.
The next morning, we walked over to Franz Josef Glacier Guides for our tour. Much debate had ensued the previous day as to whether or not we should merely walk to the lookout point over the glacier, do a half-day tour, or splurge and spend a whole day out on the ice. We chose the latter. (At least I had a coupon.)
Per the instructions, we had each worn three top layers, two bottom layers, heavy socks, and hats. In addition, they outfitted us in waterproof pants and jackets, gigantic wool socks, hiking boots, and wool mittens. Feeling like the bundled-up little brother from "A Christmas Story, we climbed onto the bus for the 10-minute ride to the foot of the glacier.
Due to an optical illusion, the glacier seemed only a few hundred feet away, despite the fact that we would have to walk two miles to reach it from the car park. I realized almost immediately that my camera would be of limited use, as the rain had started to come down in earnest. This hardly shocked anyone, seeing as how we were in the wettest part of New Zealand, where it rained 5 days out of 7. In fact, our guide Niki informed us that the extremely high rate of precipitation in the area was responsible glacier's continued existence, but by the end of the tour, she admitted that we had chanced upon a particularly harsh day.
Our ascent began with climbing on ice covered with rock, dirt, and silt. After half an hour's walk, the uncovered ice began, and Nicki instructed us to put on our crampons-- essentially, metal spikes that attached to the bottom of our hiking boots. She showed us how to slam our feet down, toes pointed, on each step, digging the spikes into the ice and providing (somewhat) secure footing. The cramp-ons weighed a ton and before we'd gone another 200 meters up, my thighs were burning, to say nothing of the damage I inflicted on my knees.
Then it began to really pour, making the morning's rainfall seem like a trickle. Up until today, Franca had served as my good-weather good luck charm. But we figured that if we had to encounter bad weather, at least it was on a glacier and we would have been wrapped up in cold-and-rain gear regardless. True, but tramping on ice isn't exactly easier with rain coming down furiously all around you.
Besides which, I am generally a clumsy bugger.* I had recently crashed a bike and fallen three times on a perfectly dry trail in summery weather. So imagine my nervousness in crossing gorges who knows how many meters deep, moving from a pick-axe-carved tread on one side to one on the other, both made of ice.
Two hours in, we stopped for lunch, eating while standing, our backs turned to the rain, arching our bodies around our food in a futile attempt to keep it dry before shoving it into our mouths. Several members of our group, including Franca, didn't even bother. Even fewer chose to heed nature's call, as none of us wanted to expose our backsides to the cold. Particularly not when our hands had already gone numb as we tried to eat.
The glacier possessed a cruel beauty, with its frozen white waves streaked with black, green, and blue. Unfortunately, the storm raged so severely and brought on such fog that visibility was extremely limited. We couldn't even see the top.
As we finished lunch, Nicki offered us the option to return to the bottom or to continue up another 200 meters to the next plateau. Much to the dismay of the group at large, one man insisted that he had paid for the full tour and he was going to get it. We made it up, looked at the view which, again, because of the visibility, was no more spectacular than the last. As soon as we had arrived, the insistent man slipped, fell, and broke his camera. At that, we turned back around.
The return journey proved even more treacherous. Hiking a glacier is not like hiking a mountain, which has been largely unchanged for centuries. A glacier is an active, moving thing, which morphs daily, and Franz Josef is the fastest morphing glacier in the world. The guides must cut new paths each day. It changed even as we were on it. The landscape appeared radically different as we made our way back down, two guides padding ahead to carve out our trail as we went.
Climbing in such conditions presented enough of a challenge already, on top of which, by this point, I could barely feel my feet. And what I could feel was pain. Pain in parts of my foot that I did not know could hurt. Like the top of my heel.
Franca fell three times; another girl sprained her ankle, and the man with the broken camera fell half a dozen times, silently threatening on each occasion to bring us all down like dominoes. Somehow I stayed entirely upright except in one instance where, twisting backward to avoid the flailing arms of the falling person ahead of me, I didn't so much fall as sit down in slow motion, my crampons stuck in the ice and my thighs unable to fight the momentum of my backswing.
Of course, the rain ceased just as we reached the bottom. Waterfalls, which had not existed when we started the trek, now ran in torrents down the mountainsides and the glacier itself, yet I could barely lift my head to observe their magnificence. I felt about 80 years old. In a single day, I thought, I may have undone six months of physical therapy for my knees. I had spent the day feeling a strange mix of exhilaration and misery. The ice-walk had amounted to one of the most terrifying, taxing challenges I had ever faced, and I had paid $170 for the experience. Reboarding the bus, I felt rather dubious about this. But by the time we had gotten back to town, stripped off and returned our gear, and imbibed some very tasty hot chocolate, I felt glad that I had done it.
That evening, we took advantage of our complimentary soak in the local hot springs, made a quick and easy dinner while an idiotic family film featuring the Rock played in the background, and fell into bed before 8pm, completely knackered.*
*Forgive my occasional use of English jargon, but I have spent so much of my trip in the company of British travelers or Europeans travelers who have learnt English from the British, that the lingo has crept in. Besides, their slang is often so much more evocative than ours. Come on. Don't you kinda wish that we said bullocks and wanker?
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Location:Franz Josef, New Zealand
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