Friday 1st January
We flew onto the glacier! In a helicopter!
Distance: Helicopter, ~20km+ ~20km, walking ~8km
Total Distance: 4079km
How did you start your new year? Hung over? At work? I started it by taking a helicopter up to a World Heritage Site, the Franz Josef Glacier. Start as you mean to go on!
It used to be possible to walk up there, but as the glacier has retreated at a record rate (global warming!) it has become too dangerous to go near the face as I a and rocks fall regularly. The glacier moves at 0.5m-2m per day, one day of the fastest in the world. Our guide told us people used to leave things like their shoes at the bottom only to find that they'd been eaten by the glacier.
We were knitted out with waterproofs, boots, crampons, and warm clothing. The day was warm and, due to the reflection of the ice, would be hotter in the glacier, so the clothing was put in our bags just in case something happened.
The helicopter took us 5 at a time on a 4 minute ride up over the valley and onto Franz Josef. Some people say it's a weird sensation, totally unlike a plane. Maybe I got a better pilot. The sensation was like nothing happened. Just sat down, lots of noise, then we were levitating over the land and out over the valley. Definitely getting a small helicopter for my midlife crisis. Might have enough money by then to afford it.
Once on the ice we attached crampons then were taken by our guide through the cracks and crevasses of the lower glacier. Apparently this is the only place in the world were one can pay to walk across this sort of terrain on a guided tour. (Ergo, you need friends, experience, or extreme bravery/stupidity to do it elsewhere.)
We walked over the ice, then down into the cracks that a made as the glacier moves and the sun begins to melt it. The ice here is white, cracks having formed in the top most layer as the sun and air bubbles work to break the ice. Dig deep enough though, or find a place out of the sun, and it's back to the clear ice with a blue hue due to thickness and how the ice refracts light.
The ice is also often dirty. As it passes through the valley it erodes the walls and floor, making a while, deep valley, like we have in northern England formed during the last ice age. The eroded and fallen debris are gathered up by the glacier and ride in, on, or under it. If ground fine enough the rock can become powdered form in "rock flour", a putty-like substance with properties like corn starch paste (solidifies with high impact, soft runny when left alone. A bit like me). There were also a number of chips stock in the surface. Being dark they absorb heat from the sun more than the reflective ice. This heat is transferred into the local ice, melting the chip a little hole to sit in.
With the ice moving so fast trips are never the same. The guides build a path through the ice, cutting steps with ice axes and erecting banisters of steel poles and ropes. We climbed between and through the ice of ever narrowing cravasses (cravass: n. Big crack in glacial ice) until we reached the highest safe point. Beyond this point is presently a rediculously, phenomenally, unbelievably large hole. Size of your local village size hole. Probably bigger than that actually. We weren't going near it.
We went back via a few caves, glacial streams (which we drank from), and passed a helipad used by older people wanting a shorter, but still high, walk. Eventually we looped back round to our own helipad, de-cramponed, and levitated in a small steel bubble through increasingly strong winds to Franz Josef, taking in the Robert's Point platform I visited on Day 25 and the path to the glacier base I did Day 26. 4 minutes we'd swooped down and back to base.
What a ride!
We also got free entry to the centre's hot pools. I went back to the hostel, had a random nap on the floor for an hour, ate an early dinner, showered, then went back. I relaxed, chatted to a few people, and was eventually thrown out at closing time.
