Franz Josef Glacier

Day 181 – Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand

Yesterday was spent getting here, from Punakaiki to Franz Josef Glacier. It is the name of the town, and the name of its main attraction.

Today, a shuttle took me to the car park from which many trails go to and around the glacier. I started with the one that take the visitor the closest to the glacier’s terminal face. As the sky was cloudy on my way in but had lifted on my way back, I switched around the order of my pictures to have those with the better light.

Franz Josef Glacier – View of the glacier’s valley from Sentinel Rock

You start walking in a forest until you reach an embankment above the moraine. You have the first view over the open valley. The glacier is the blueish globe between the two mountain walls at the end of the valley.

Franz Josef Glacier – View of the glacier’s moraine – The glacier used to end here around 1965; it keeps receding.

There are quite a few waterfalls along the mountainsides. There is also the almost constant buzz of helicopters ferrying tourists above the glacier and for some, dropping them off on it for a walk (a heli-walk). In my dorm room, two people went skydiving and another had the heli-walk.

Franz Josef Glacier

After going back to the carpark, I went for shorter walks: first to the Sentinel Rock, which is a climb on top of a small hill giving an amazing view of the valley, then to Peter’s Pool (see picture header), which is a kettle pool. It means that when the glacier receded, it left behind a giant block of ice nested in a hollow, and when it melted, it became a pool. According to the size of the ice block or the hollow, it can become a kettle lake.

I’ll conclude with a picture of the valley with the glacier on one’s back (all the pictures are in the gallery):

Franz Josef Glacier – The valley behind

Tomorrow will be a long bus ride to get to Queenstown!