Chasing Ice

CHASING ICE

OUR GUIDE TO NEW ZEALAND’SGLACIERS AND SCENIC FLIGHTS

New Zealand’s glaciers truly stand tall. Our specialist contrasts the big three — Franz Josef, Fox and Tasman — and shares his tips for how to experience them

WORDS BY JOHN PERRY

Stepping onto a glacier throws

you into an otherworldly landscape – one of crevasses, ice caves glowing teal blue and cyan, and moulins (chutes) that spiral water deep into the glacier’s depths. Why, though, are New Zealand’s rivers of ice so special? Where should you go to explore them – the West Coast glaciers of Franz Josef and Fox, or the Tasman Glacier at Mount Cook? How can you experience these immense bodies of ice at their finest?

Confession: I’m a glacier devotee. No matter where I go in the world, if there’s a glacier to be seen, I’m there in a flash. I’ve

visited quite a few: Canada’s Athabasca Glacier, for one, and the many-tongued glaciers of Iceland. However, I think there’s something particularly rewarding about New Zealand’s offerings: their setting, and (in the case of Tasman) their utter remoteness and quiet.

THE MOUNT COOK REGION

THE TASMAN GLACIER

The biggest of New Zealand’s glaciers is situated on the South Island, a three-hour drive away from Wanaka. The Tasman Glacier can’t be reached from the West

Coast glaciers (the Southern Alps stand in your way), but it has a scale and stillness that neither Franz Josef nor Fox can rival.

A great pure-white ribbon running 16 miles in total (compared with Franz Josef’s four miles), the Tasman Glacier has an ineffable sense of wilderness. It’s much gentler in gradient than Fox or Franz Josef and a less strenuous walk. Standing on it among the fresh, powdery névé snow, the ice stretches as far as the eye can see. Mount Cook stands shyly just beyond the glacier. (I say ‘shyly’ because it seems to like hiding behind a scrim of clouds.)

Tasman may seem a little less high-octane than Fox or Franz Josef, but I love standing

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NEW ZEALAND

GETTING ONTO THE GLACIERS

You don’t need to be a mountaineer to physically stand on a New Zealand glacier. Although you can no longer simply stride onto them, they’re still easy to reach. Heli-hiking involves being picked up by a helicopter and deposited in the middle of the glacier in order to hike on its surface: there’s no strenuous climbing or scrambling involved. At the Tasman Glacier, you can reach the glacier’s terminal face by boat, weaving past icebergs on the terminal lake to get within close proximity of this calving wall of ice.

A real ice capade New Zealand’s glaciers provide a whole lot of adventure

on it, alone on this ice giant save for a few other people, who look like matchsticks engulfed by whiteness from the air. From a helicopter, on a fine day, it looks like you’re coming into land on a dazzlingly white runway. Bring sunglasses.

THE WEST COAST GLACIERS

FRANZ JOSEF & FOX

Franz Josef and its slightly longer but less steep cousin, Fox, run right down to the sea, a phenomenon almost unmatched elsewhere in the world. Bordered by dense podocarp rainforest on the West Coast of

the South Island, you can visit them as part of a drive down the coast, linking up with the TranzAlpine, one of New Zealand’s best railway journeys.

A guided heli-hike will get you onto the glaciers properly and, once there, you can clamber up and down their corrugated surfaces, gazing up at icefalls and the steep tree-covered moraine. Sometimes, if there’s snowmelt, small waterfalls stream down the gully sides.

Up on the glaciers, your spatial relationships can become befuddled. I remember asking my guide on Fox how far we’d walk during our time on the ice. I pointed to the icefall looming ahead of us, ‘That far?’ I said, hopefully. My guide smiled and shook her head, ‘A friend and I tried to go up there once. It took us eight hours.’

Then once we’d begun to pick our way across the glacier’s surface, I understood. From the helicopter, their sides look smooth; up close, they’re anything but. You pick your way through parts of ice so jagged and crevassed they tower above you. Some gleam shades of blue, some are greyed and browned by moraine. At other points, you slip and slide over little slopes and through semi-circular caves. You’re not going anywhere fast, and that’s part of the fun.

TRAVEL ESSENTIALS

Flight information: Direct flights from Los Angeles to Auckland are around 13 hours. Direct flights are also available from Houston and Chicago. When to go: Weather-wise the best time to visit is between October and April, but you’ll find far fewer visitors if you go in New Zealand’s spring months (October to December) or its autumn (March to May). You just need to be prepared to take a risk with the weather. Get me there: A 16-day tailor-made trip to New Zealand, incorporating the highlights of both islands on a self-drive basis, starts from £7,200pp. For more information, please contact our New Zealand specialists on 1-833-357-5652.

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