Glacier Country

Tuesday 12th March
A Glacier is defined as a body of ice larger than 1 hectare, surviving more than 2 decades.
NewZealand has more than 3000 glaciers and we were determined to experience at least one of them; the Fox Glacier.
We left John and Toni a little after 9:30 for our adventure on the Glacier. Ian had picked up our hire car yesterday so all we had to do was pack it up. While we were doing that John had packed us a lovely picnic and Toni had picked strawberries fresh from her garden.
Leaving Prebbleton and Christchurch behind we drove along the State Highway 73 which took us over  Arthur's Pass, and is the highest of only three roads crossing the Southern Alps. Arthur's pass, is a  mountain pass in the Southern Alps of the South Island of New Zealand. It marks part of the boundary between Westland and Canterbury and lies in a saddle between the valleys of the Otira River, a tributary of the Taramakau, in the west and the Bealey River in the east.

We stopped at Bealey Hotel which as it names suggests overlooks the Bealey River. it was here that we stopped only a week before with John and Toni on our way to Punakaiki. Toni had told us about the wild Kea, a parrot like bird, that love to peck the windscreen wipers off the parked cars but we hadn't seen any at the time. This time was different. a pair of Kea tried their luck, unsuccessfully, on our car.

We continued over the Southern Alps and turned south along the coast road towards Fox Glacier, arriving in the early afternoon. After booking our glacier tour, we were told about stunning sunsets and we were not disappointed that evening.

We were also told about the glowworms in the rain forest so after dinner we took a stroll along the glowworm trail. Pity that we couldn't photograph them but it was like walking through a fairy city with twinkling lights by their thousand.

Wednesday 13th March
The tour bus  left from their offices just a stone's throw from the motel we were booked into so after I made a breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast, we wandered over to the office to meet our tour guide. Here we were kitted out with leather walking boots and crampons to ensure that we had suitable gear for our walk.
Fox Glacier is 13 km long making it the longest glacier in the Westland National Park (and just before you ask, no, we didn't walk the entire 13km). At its head, the peaks of Mt Cook and Mt Tasman soar over 3000m
This mighty moving river of ice falls 2600m on its journey from the base of the Southern Alps to the west coast. The unique combination of climate and shape means that the Fox Glacier moves at approximately 10 times the speed of other valley glaciers around the world.
The bus took us, along with the other visitors, the 8km south of the village to the glacier car park where we were all given our safety talk and split between two guides.
From the car park, it was a 20 minute walk to the front of the glacier, and along the way, our guide, Joe, pointed out interesting features and told us how a glacier works. For instance, the delicate balance of the accumulation of snow gained in the upper area and the melting ice in the lower part. An increase in the accumulation of snow will result in the glacier advancing and correspondingly, a faster melt will result in the glacier retreating. Although the glacier is at present retreating, it was only a few years ago that it was advancing.

At the face of the glacier, where the terminal moraine (rocks and sediment pushed along at the front of the glacier) is deposited, we branched off and walked along the glacier edge to a point were it was safe to climb onto the ice.

It was amazing to see the ice formations, and even climb into one.

In places, we could see where the ice was melting and also we could hear the rock falls from along the ice edge. This is truly experiencing the might of nature.

The shear size is breath-taking, as you can see from the photo. There are three groups of 15 to 20 people in this photo.

Thursday 14th March
The town of Fox Glacier has a lovely outlook across surrounding farms, and the view of Mt Tasman, Mt Cook and the Fox Glacier are stunning from Lake Matheson.

We had breakfast while admiring this wonderful vista, before setting off for a drive along the  State Highway 6 towards Haast. Joe, the guide from the glacier walk, had recommended this drive. We drove down a green corridors of temperate rain forest, the tall tree ferns reaching skyward and competing for the sun with the conifers and broad leaf evergreens, while the low level ferns and mosses covered the forest floor.

The sea views at Ships Creek and Knights Point Lookout were spectacular, just as we had been told, but it was the whitebait patties that we had to find out about. Whitebait are tiny transparent young of some of New Zealand's native fish. The Curley tree Whitebait company, run by Tony and Moana Kerr, nestles on the Waita river about 10km north of Haast and it was here that we met Tony. He told us about the whitebait industry that he and his wife are now running and while he was talking, he made us the delicious whitebait patties that his family are renowned for. The whitebait is quite different from the whitebait that we know in England, but the patties were delicious anyway.
On our return from Haast, we took a slight detour and viewed the Fox Glacier once more but from a different perspective.