Franz Josef Glacier

Today was our amazing hike on Franz Josef Glacier. I was a part of the half day hike which involved a four our tramp up the glacier and back. This was a new experience as I have never walked on a glacier before. Our guide was very chatty and had many fun facts about the glacier and glaciers in general. The most obvious feature of a glacier is sheer size. The glacier reaches to a height of 2700 meters above sea level to 240 meters in 11 km which makes it the steepest and fastest flowing glacier that is commercially guided in the world. The next obvious feature is the color. The ice sheet appears a beautiful blue color as the light hits it because the wavelength of blue is reflected by the ice and others are absorbed. We were informed that as you go deeper into the ice, the color turns into a lavender about 30 meters down and way at the bottom you will find a deep purple color. This is something that we were told that we did not want to find out firsthand as that would mean that we had fallen to the bottom of the glacier! There are holes in the ice that are called moulins. These structures are like tubes that make the plumbing of the glacier. The melted water will collect in these moulins and runs through them to the bottom. Underneath the glacier the water creates the equivalent to a lubricant so that the ice sheet can move over the rocky surface below. An issue that we have been discussing on this trip is that of climate change. One of the signs of global warming has been the retreating and disappearing of the glaciers. The Franz Josef glacier is special in the sense that it is actually growing! The formation of glaciers can be basically described when there is snowfall at the top and it becomes compacted into ice. At the base of Franz Josef there may be 4-5 meters of snowfall per year, but at the top there is about 45 meters of snowfall per year. This snow makes the glacier grow about 70 cm per day. On the half day hike, we were taken into two ice caves. The larger of the two was about 8 meters in length and had plenty of head room. It was very beautiful. This cave opened about 3 weeks ago and is estimated by our guide to be open for only about 3 more weeks. To our surprise, there was a large crevasse that opened up yesterday at the end of the cave. It was wet and narrow and very steep down then back up the other side. There were times when my whole body was sideways because it was too small to fit in facing the front. The smaller of the ice caves was only about 3 meters long and had a "sunroof" as named by our guide. There was a hole that looked up to the sky at the end which showed the beautiful blue sky against the light blue ice.  It was amazing to see how the glacier that is believed to have one reached the Tasman Sea which is 19 km away has carved away the Southern Alps to make a flat rocky valley. A special feature of the glacier is that it is surrounded by rainforest. It is an unusual sight to see such a large sheet of ice surrounded by lush mountain rainforest. All in all, the day was wonderful. We were able to learn about the glaciers while getting to explore one firsthand, inside and out. 

Reported by Anna Jamrozek