New Zealand- Day 4

Well I figured I better keep up with this before I forget everything. I've been doing so much!

Thursday we went up the San Josef Glacier. We got up early headed down to the shop and waited for the group to get ready.
Just a little background information. The Glacier is a huge block of ice that is 11 kilometers long, which I guess is about 8 miles long. 4 kilometers is visible from the bottom and the rest is spread amongst the back behind the mountains. Some guy with the last name Haast named the glacier Franz Josef because it reminded him of Franz Josef (sorry I forget waht country he was from) and his long white beard. The glacier moves about 3 to 4 meters a day, so one track that someone used earlier in the day might not be the same when the next group goes through.
So back to my day... It was a nice sunny day so they let us have the choice whether or not we wanted to have over pants that were somewhat waterproof. Meribeth and I opted to have the pants because all I had on were running tights. We also geared up with boots, large rain jackets, gloves, beanies, and ice spikes to go on the bottom of our feet. Once we were all geared up we headed up to the glacier. It was about a 10 minute ride.
WE signed up for a full day which ended up being about 6 hours on the ice and we ended up walking around 16 kilomters which I think would be equivalent to about 9 or 10 miles. So it was a long tiring hike.
First we had to walk about 50 minutes through the valley to get up the glacier, then you stop and put on your ice spikes so you can walk on the ice and not slip all over the place.
We made our way up to the start of the glacier and started our climb. First there are large steps and hand ropes to make it up the first part because it is rather steep. Supposedly, it is the steepest glacier in the world that is used commericially. So we walked up the large stairs and took lots of pictures. The glacier looked like huge mounds of snow that ended in a point. I just wanted to run and jump on the mounds, but in acutality they were large pieces of white and sometimes black dirt. The rocks and debris fall down from the mountains surrounding it.
I forgot at the beginning of the glacier there is this large ice cave at the very bottom. Makes you think you are walking on a hollow glaicer that you can fall through any minute. We were reassured that rock sometimes goes higher so it's not all like that but there are parts where it's ice and then air at the bottom. Pretty scary to think about. The cave had mounds and mounds of ice that had broken off at the bottom of the cave. Our tour guide said they weren't there yesterday, so that's how fast the glacier ice falls off the bottom.
So anyways, we were up passed the stairs and we began our hike into the top where there are no stairs, and the tour guide had to take a huge ice pick and form small stairs for us. Most of the time only one foot fit on the stairs and we had to go up one foot at a time trying to step up. It was necessary to use your hands because you had to lift yourselves up sometimes.
I am so thankful that I got those pants over the top of my pants because I was freezing cold. AS we got to the top it got really really cold, as you can imagine sitting on miles of ice. AT one point the guide said the ice below us was about 400 meters deep.
On the glacier they get an annual rain drop of about 7 meters. That is 21 feet of rain in one year. Towards the back of the glaicer they get something like 80 meters of rain and snow a year. So it's pretty crazy, and that is how it stays a huge block of ice.
Up at the top we had to go through little tunnels and sometimes ditches that we could barely fit in. I'm not sure how people much bigger than me fit through because I felt like a size 10 foot fitting into a size 4 shoe. It was just crazy. Luckily you slide through ice so you can jiggle yourself through. We had to take our backpacks off and go one foot at a time through some of these ditches.
Some of the places we went were just inches away from huge holes that you couldn't even see where they went. The top layer of the ice was melting as well so there were small waterfalls everywhere.
We zig zagged back and forth back and forth. So it fet like we were lost and never going to come down.
I was more than ready to come down after a while because it is tiring and you are freezing cold. At one point I slipped and fell, and let me tell you...ice hurts! I have a huge bruise on my shin that matched the bruise I got from kakadu the week before.
It was cold, and the bad part of the trip is you had to stop sooooo many times so the guide could make out a new path for us to go through. There was one group ahead of us so we kind of used theres but we had to stop so much so she could make a path for us.
Otherwise it was amazing. Truly beautiful. some parts were sky blue, some parts were pure white, and others were dirty from all the debris falling from the mountains. Everyday is a life threatening situation around here let me tell you. One slip and you could fall to the ground, rocks could suddenly fall and collapse on you. It's just amazing that more accidents don't happen around here.
On our way off the glacier another large mass of ice fell from the cave and you could feel the rumble and shake as it fell off and hit the ground. It was so scary I almost made a new shade of yellow ice on the glacier. haha j/k but it was a pretty scary feeling.
We finally made our way down and we took of the ice spikes and headed back to the bus.
We turned all our gear in. Meribeth and I had to check into a new hostel and so we headed there showered, cooked some food in the kitchen at the hostel, used the internet and pretty much went to bed. It was exhausting! Next morning we headed to Queenstown.