South Island Day 6: Ice Ice Baby (Sorry, I Couldn't Help Myself)

I woke up having been a sandfly banquet and thanked my lucky stars that I had enough blood to function with. So much for the natural essential oil bollocks ay, fuck your hippy shit I'd like my DEET back now please.
However I also woke up to this view:

Dawn

Oh New Zealand, I can't stay mad at you for long.

Me and Shane left Nat at the fun bus and headed into town for our Fox Trot walk on the ice. On arrival we were given a safety brief and had to swap our shoes for boots that were compatible with their crampons which would be fine but I swear they were lined with lead. They were heavy as and I had to wear two pairs of socks to make them fit.
As we were putting on our concrete shoes they started telling us what to expect on the walk. First we had to get to the ice, this involved a walk through the valley to the face of the glacier and then we were to walk up 700 steps.

Fox Glacier

No, my finger didn't slip on the zero key then. Seven hundred fucking steps in the heaviest boots in the world which feasibly could be used to beat the guide round the head with at the top of aforementioned steps. Making me climb up steps is worse than PMS and when I get on the PMS its time to hide the sharp pointy objects and anything heavy enough to be used as a blunt instrument. And what is at the top of the 700 steps you might ask? Oh, only a 150m drop to the right although in all honesty I was more worried about the steps than the drop.

So off we went to the glacier and my potential doom. And yeah, it's hard work but I seriously pushed myself. It would have been easier if I didn't have tombstones strapped to my feet but I was well impressed with myself for not actually having a cry or a tanty the whole way up and I even managed to keep up with the guide for most of it. Yes, I'd like my medal now please.

Like The Boots?

Just as my legs were about to give up we made it to the start of the ice and got our crampons on. We were told to keep our weight in the centre of our feet and dig the crampons into the ice as we walked resulting in a stampy, flatfooted walk as if you were having a little tanty and storming out of the room with a flick of your hair. If you have hair. If you don't then a flick might just look a bit gay.
But anyway, after attaching the spikes to our boots we made it onto the ice, some of them brandishing walking sticks. Me and Shane decided against the stick on account of the fact of I was to slip I'd want to be grabbing onto something that was less likely to come with me. Such as the bloke at the front that just made me walk up 700 steps.

It's stunning once you're up there though, this will probably be the first and last time I'll ever walk on ice like this on account of my aversion to being cold but to experience walking on a glacier in the middle of a New Zealand summer was awesome.

It wasn't that long ago, a matter of months when the Fox Glacier was the site of two deaths. Two lads had jumped the rope barriers and made their way to the face of the ice and as they were looking up and their family watched on a huge chunk of it broke away and crushed them. Geoff, our guide told us the Fox Glacier guides were first on the scene but there was nothing they could do, to go any closer would be to put their own lives at risk. One of the bodies was recovered that day. The other one was washed out a couple of weeks later and was fortunately found before it was washed completly out to sea.
So yeah, sometimes I may seem boring and lack adventure but hey, barriers are there for a reason. We all have to die at some point but if it can be avoided, why not avoid it?

I think something happens to your brain whnen you go on holiday, it's like you leave it on the side in the kitchen next to a note telling the neighbours how much food to give the fish while you're away. It's like you run through a checklist as you're leaving; Passport? Check. Credit cards? Check. Brain? Well we won't be needing THAT! Tourists aren't stupid (not all of them anyway) but when you go on holiday it seems to give you a licence to be an idiot. This is why I identify as a backpacker and not a tourist.

Yeah We Rock

Anyway, we made it back down in one piece, picked Nat up and headed south towards Haast. Now Haast will add to the join the dots pattern on the various parts of your body that the sandflies have gotten to and any exposed surface, just the walk from the car to the supermarket left us with significant blood loss. We were well and truly in sandfly world.

I *Heart* DEET

As we pulled into our camp for the night, a DoC site called Cameron Flats, I promised my Aeroguard I'd never leave it again and promptly doused myself in it and stayed away from naked flames for the rest of the night.

written by

Koala Bear on February 8, 2009 from Fox Glacier, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Tiny Little NZ Road Trip

tagged RoadTrip, LovinIt and SouthIsland

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