We got the call!!! 🚁

Franz Josef Glacier. The steepest and fastest moving glacier in NZ. It is the west side of the mountain range with Mount Cook, the hooker and tasman glaciers, etc

The reason that our heli hike was cancelled was that, being early, they would not have had the opportunity to check out the route after the bad weather. Having arrived late yesterday, we could see they would not have been able to go up that day, and indeed, we had not heard any helicopters. The weather today, however, was promising, and the choppers were certainly flying.

With the heli hike cancelled, we took the much needed opportunity for a little lie in. A nice facon sandwich in the room as we had a little hob, and sat down to work out which walks we would do, ideally not too far away incase they called, and working out whether to wear our heli hike clothes or have them on standby.

Mark put his phone on loud as we had given them the NZ sim number, and 5 minutes later, it rang. YES we said!

And yes, I will totally bore you with photos! Don’t worry, there are more if you want them, just give us a shout. What an experience!

The guide, Cale, was brilliant. Very patient and no rush for any of it. From ensuring we had the right amount of layers to putting on harnesses and crampons, and double carabiner clip-on to safety lines.

First, the heli ride. We needed to weigh in once we were loaded up with our over coats, over trousers and harnesses, to work out who would sit where. Being one of the smallest I got a front row ticket!

After watching a rather scary rock fall on the far valley, which our chap had to fully report, a crampon and pole stop, and we were off!

This was the highlight. A very tight squeeze and a hole at the bottom! Yes, we needed to get through where the rope goes!

We met one of the guys up there who checks/makes the routes each morning. It moves so quickly that we were the first to do some of the route. At the other extreme, it is due to rain on Sunday, and the crevices we walked through would likely no longer be there after the rain. Nature at its most amazing!

Before returning to the chopper, we also saw a small avalanche a distance off.

To put it in perspective the A and B and the B are where we went, and on the second picture, the two glaciers are hooker on the left and tasman on the right that we visited a few days before.

We later took a walking route to the nearest you can get to the bottom. 3km from the end!

For dinner, we visited the Blue Ice restaurant. Definitely recommended. I had the best stuffed chicken……,filled with spinach leaves, camembert cheese, chorizo, and sundried tomatoes wrapped with bacon and served with potatoes, seasonal vegetables, and mushroom bacon sauce. 👌

Followed by a very dark walk down terrace walk. So lovely to see glow worms in a natural habitat, jf not a little spookey. Some country people kindly helped us find our way without our lights on, and it was a spectacular show from the glowworms.