We’ve hiked on them, caught a helicopter halfway up them, drank them, climbed through them, photographed them (copiously), slept next to them, counted them, and watched bits of them float in a lake, so is there anything else you can do with glaciers? Yes there is. Turns out you haven’t seen the best of a glacier until you see it from the air. So that’s what we did today.
Taking to the air with me in the copilots seat, (and quietly trying to remember how that flight simulator game worked, just in case) we took to the air, flying up the glacier from yesterday and over the névé (the snow “lake” that the glacier flows from). The snow was pristine, untouched and ripe to jump into. Although it looked close, it was probably a long way down as the névé tend to be a few kilometres across, and those little cracks were probably a few hundred metres deep. New Zealand is meant to have about 3,000 glaciers, and up there it’s a lot easier to believe it as the mountain ranges stretch off to the horizon with peaks as far as the eye can see. The plane flew over the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers, around a few peaks and then headed back. We also got some pretty awesome and up close views of Mount Cook, which left us feeling even more impressed with anyone who has ever climbed it.
I think it’s now safe to say that we’ve done glaciers, and they are surely the best thing to come out of getting water cold!