An Icy Reception

Heli-hiking on Fox Glacier was probably the main thing we were looking forward to doing on this trip to the South Island. It would be a first of many things for us: flying in a helicopter, seeing a glacier, and hopefully exploring some ice caves. When you’re looking forward to anything in life, you can’t help but picture how you think it might be. If you’re an optimist then this will always be perfect – perfect weather, perfect experience, and everything that you hope for. Unfortunately, the same curse that ridiculed our vision of ‘Mitre Peak’ in Milford Sound was back to taunt us again. Nothing personal; I've now discovered it's just an effect of meteorology and geography - the South-Westland lies in the path of a band of wind known as the ‘roaring forties’. Once this wind rises to pass the Southern Alps, it cools and drops its cargo as rain and snow. On the plus side, this is what feeds the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers and keeps them in existence, but it doesn’t help much when trying to view them from a helicopter - our flight was officially cancelled.


In truth, once we’d seen the advent of rain, our desire to do the hike fell in a similar fashion. There was no point doing the trip, just for the sake of it, and we all knew that it would be miserable in the wet – especially considering the cost involved. No, it would have to remain on ‘the list’ for another day. However, just because the helicopters weren’t flying, didn’t mean we couldn’t take a peak at the base. No point, passing through the area without at least a glacial glance.


I’d previously only seen glaciers from the modest distance of the cruising altitude of a commercial aeroplane, or while snowboarding on top on one. Either way, it’s a little hard to properly gauge the monumental size of the things and thus appreciate how impressive they actually are. As well as the size, (13km long, 300m deep, and a vertical drop of 2600m) the glaciers of this region have a few extra attributes that separate them from those that reside elsewhere in the world: A high amount of snowfall on a nevés larger than cities, combined with basal sliding, and the incline, cause these glacier to have flow rates up to 10 times faster than most valley glaciers; amazingly the terminal face of Fox Glacier is just 300 metres above sea level, 20 km from the coast, and in the middle of lush rainforest. For these reasons, both glaciers are also easily accessible.

We left the car park with the simple desire to walk to the nearest view point and just see the glacier from afar, but once the beast was in sight, it beckoned us closer and we forgot about the rain. It looked massive from a distance, but was infinitely more impressive once we were standing beneath its jagged haunches and watching roaring white water burst forth from its mouth.


Once the rain had seeped through to the skin, we called it a day, and headed on up the coast. The plan was to stop at the next town as we knew how early people in these parts stopped serving dinner, but the first few options didn’t seem warm to outsiders. The only thing lacking was a banjo playing hick and the squeal of a pig. Dinner began to seem less important.


In the end our patience was rewarded, but our wallets were dented. Chosen for the fact there was a restaurant on-site, we stayed at a posh out-of-town place near Hokitika called ‘Stations Inn’ and had the best dinner and night's sleep yet.