December 31st, 2005 - Glacier Country

That night in Christchurch we had our first really terrible dorm room experience. We had a 6 man room in which 2 people were horrific snorers! I'm talking medical condition bad snoring. We actually had to ask one of them to change positions, because otherwise neither of us would have got any sleep. At 6:00 am eyes bloodshot with limited sleep, I dragged Laure out of her restless sleep and we headed for glacier country through the famous Arthurs Pass Laure slepped most of the way and I was wired from my frustration, stopping often for pictures of the valleys and Mountain views as the road wound it's way across the Western Range. All through our adventures we stop occasionally at tourist spots, to break up the drive, this time I walked into the forest to see a 3000 ton rock. I figured it had to be something worth a 10 minute walk, but it turned out to be exactly what it said - a rock! We also stopped at a glow worm dell, where had it been dark, we would have seen glow worms throughout. Next thing we knew, we had crossed the whole Island and hit the Tasman Sea on the West Coast. Amazing that you can cross the whole South Island in under 4 hours. We stopped at the Franz Joseph glacier, drove to the foot and walked up to the base of the towering ice flow, before we proceeded to the Fox Glacier, which is slightly bigger, less popular and a friend of Aunt Judy owns an Adventure company there. Although, I never actually met Caroll Browne - I left her a novel of a letter on Aunt Judy's behalf sending her regards and a brief update. Fox is a cute town, but everything along the West Coast is pricy - groceries, gas (143.9) and lodging.
That night we had high hopes of going to THE bar in Fox and have a drink before celebrating the New Year, but after a horrific night before, both of us were out before the clock struck 12' only to be woken by my alarm at 11:55pm to take in the New Year, before crashing again.
The next morning was our highly anticipated Full Day glacier walk. They suited us up with boots, jackets and tuques if needed, before we were shuttled to the base of the glacier. Some guides wake up early and carve steps in the glacier for the half day and full day tours to get on the ice flow up the steep shoulder and then the Full day trekkers leave the beateb track with their guide to venture whereever the ice flows allow. Although the tour was slightly boring because the guides were constantly stopping to carve steps where crampons would have worked just fine (for security reasons), the scenery and information that the tour provided were definetly impressive. The glaciers are all essentially ice waterfalls. Hot air from Australia drifts towards NZ across the Tasman picking up moisture and then hits the Western Range of NZ, where the clouds are too heavy to make it over the Mountains and it snows at the top - alot. The snow accumulates and the pressure from the tons of snow compresses and makes ice in the Neve - collection basin at the top. Then the accumulation forces the snow and ice down through the valleys. At the top the shards of ice are monstrous, followed by a period of flatness, before more crevasses and spires near the bottom, similar to the splashes of a waterfall. The bottom of the glacier is full of dirt and rocks collected on its way down, whereas the top is very clear. After the walk it began to rain and we grabbed a hot chocolate before we headed out towards Haast for a night stay to break up the drive to Queenstown. The problem was there was no vacancy anywhere in the tiny town of Haast and so we were forced to sleep in the car on a miserable, rainy night at the side of the one way highway. The next day we saw some people who were trying to dry their tent after braving the storm, so in hindsight sleeping in the tent wasn't near as bad.