Frozen Water

For as long as I can remember I've spent most of January each year camping at the beach with my family. This year I finally broke the streak and went to New Zealand instead. As sad as I was to be missing out on two weeks of sun and sand, I was very excited to get away from the excruciating summer we've had this year. I was even more excited that today I would finally get to climb a glacier!

We woke up nice and early, donned our many layers of warm clothing and headed down to the meeting place to check in with our guides. So that we could get a proper experience on the glacier rather than just walking around on the muddy ice at the base, we had booked in for a heli-hike. This way we would be able to explore the upper parts of the glacier without having to hike all day to get there. Unfortunately, to be able to fly a helicopter up to the glacier, there needs to be a fairly high level of visibility. Just our luck - a large layer of fog had settled in the Fox Glacier region the day before. We waited for a while in the vain hope that it might clear enough to allow us to take our helicopter flight, but after half an hour of waiting it didn't appear to be going anywhere. Luckily, there was space in the afternoon heli-hike group, so we were all told to come back later when (hopefully) the weather had cleared.

To fill in some time, we decided to go on a walk to Lake Matheson, a lake famous for it's reflected views of Mount Cook and Mount Tasman. The fog detracted a bit from the experience but I still managed to capture a few half-decent photos of the mirror effect.

 

Towards the end of the walk we came across some fascinating blue mushrooms.  They were so unnaturally blue we were convinced they were fake, but according a quick Google search they are real and called "entoloma hochstetteri" or "werewere-kōkako" in Māori.

"Entoloma hochstetteri" or "werewere-kōkako"

Eventually hunger got the better of us so we headed back to our motel for lunch (two minute noodles!) and an episode of Game of Thrones. After lunch it was finally time for take two of our heli-hike so we headed back to the meeting point. As luck would have it, the sky had cleared just enough for the hike to go ahead so we all jumped on a bus for a short trip to the departure area. After a short safety briefing (i.e. don't touch the helicopter blades, don't run on the ice, etc.), we each grabbed a pair of boots, crampons and hiking poles and we finally got into our helicopter.

Chris and his 8-bit glasses are ready to go!

On the short helicopter flight we had a great (somewhat foggy) view of the glacier and (finally!) we landed, ready to do some exploring.

Not the most inviting view...

Once everyone had been dropped off by their helicopters, our guide took us on an adventure up the glacier. The hike consisted mostly of us fooling around on the ice and taking as many photos as possible.

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Chris spent his time trying to be as goofy as possible...

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Strong man attack then eat ice!

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Jump!

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Meanwhile, I tried to capture some normal photos of us...

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Unfortunately some of us didn't make it through the hike...

A frozen grave

After a couple of hours on the glacier, it was time to go and, as luck would have it, the sky finally cleared up as we got into the helicopter.

Blue sky at last!