Heli-Hiking the Fox Glacier!

Monday 14th January, 2019.

Yesterday (Sunday) was a bad day. A combination of illness and torrential rain wrote the day off for us. We managed an 1 and a half trail walk in the morning then the rest of the day was done. We spent probably what was a well earned rest day in the van watching videos, reading books and with the heating on full blast. That was our Sunday. Which let’s face it, there is worse ways to spend your Sunday!

On to Monday and in typical New Zealand style the weather changed dramatically this morning, from the pouring rain to the glorious sunshine and blue skies.

We had booked a 4 hour heli-hike to the Fox Glacier at 11:40AM. Which basically was a helicopter to the glacier itself as there is no longer walk on access and then a guided 3 hour hike through the glacier and then back to “land” in another helicopter.

What an experience!

I’ve never actually been on a helicopter before so I was super excited to get on and fly through the mountains to the glacier.

It was about a 5 minute flight through dense rain forest and over mountains to reach the glacier.

Once we landed we donned our crampons, armed our poles and set off on a weaving trail through the glacier.

Unfortunately the Fox glacier has receded somewhat dramatically in the last 20/30 years and has really backtracked up the valley. A real shame as I can’t even imagine how big and bold this thing was back then.

Our hike was awesome, Lucas and Steve our guides axed our path and taught us about the glacier itself, how it moves and what it gets up to. Incredibly the glacier actually moves 5m a day!

Once we had weaved our way through, up, over, in and out we headed back to the helicopter landed and boarded back to Fox Glacier township.

Highly recommend the trip to anyone who comes to NZ!

From Fox Glacier township we had a 2 1/2 hour drive north to our next destination, Hokitika.

Hokitka has a incredible gorge walk which we managed to get in just before sunset last night. A beautiful blue river, and I mean blue, with suspension bridges and beautiful rock formations.

Just in time for sunset, we sat on the beach and then headed from our camp for the night.

Another quality day in NZ, cobba! ??

Share now...

Leave a Reply