Day #9, glaciers

Some of our travels make me feel like we are at the ends of the earth, only water left, no more land to be found. It is eerie but starkly beautiful on the South Island's western coast.

I awoke thinking about these contrasts and realized we might be hard-pressed to see much of anything today due to the drizzle and low clouds. Our first real day of rain, time to test out the raingear!

The western coast doesn't have much by way of indoor activities (i.e., museums, good shopping, cultural attractions), so further south we drove in hopes of some weather clearing. More gorgeous water that is too dangerous for swimming. We stopped in a town known for its jade mining and the sun broke out, so onward we drove to Franz Joseph glacier.

What a gorgeous place, so reminiscent of Alaska but on a grander scale. We hiked up the hill a mile away for a view and decided to hike the gravel trail right up to the glacier itself. The clouds were trying to lift and it was a lovely walk past mountainside vegetation tinged with red to indicate the presence of fall in the near future.

Skinny waterfalls poured from sheer cliffs on those mountains flanking the glacier.

Smooth striated rock, dirty glacial sediments and blue folds of ice set the stage. Chalky gray waters poured from underneath the compacted ice, carving out a shallow semi-circle.

Ah, I never get over how neat glaciers are. They seem to be living, breathing creatures to me, moving and shifting to get more comfortable and formidably expressing their happiness or rage, depending on the day's events. This one recedes up to a foot per day!! That is an amazing testament to climate change. Watch out for falling rocks, blocks of icy glacier castoffs, potential for flash flooding from the aftermath. Nothing that exciting happened but it was still a beautiful scene.

Check out the gold-colored striations in the rock!

Oh my goodness, onto very twisty turny teeny tiny roads that can get scary at places if you pass a big rig. Yikes! Heading a bit further south to Fox Glacier and hoping to catch a glimpse of Mt. Cook (highest in the country at 3,754 m). We walked along a cute little forested path full of lush moss and emerged to find not much of a view.

Ahhh, that postcard scene was imagined rather than actually witnessed. Misty scenes, the glacier hidden somewhere deep in the mountains where only helicopters and perhaps wild horses explore. The mountain passes are so steep and almost impossible to traverse. Flat pastures in the foreground were full of sheep and cows that did not seem to realize they have a famous scene as a backdrop--they simply call that place home.

We drove back north to camp at Lake Ianthe, catching a brief glimpse of Mt. Elie de Beaumont, no slouch at 3,117 m tall (see tiny peak of white in the photo).

The DOC site we found was essentially a gravel parking lot, but the views of the lake and small stream were cute. Pit toilets, no shower, and plenty of sand flies!! Similar to black flies here. After a campstove dinner of pasta and veggies, we retired to the van for relief from the bugs. Time for lots of rest, we were heading to Arthur's Pass the next day for hikes and views of the grand Southern Alps.