My Day with Franz

May 6th. It is an early start - we head off to the Franz Josef Glacier guide office for our 8:15 start. We get all our equipment - Raincoat, Rainpants, Hat, Gloves, Boots and Ice Talonz (tm) and then head off to the bus which will take us to the glacier. It is grey and overcast today and spotting with rain. We walk 40 odd minutes to the terminal face of the glacier and put our Ice Talonz (tm) on our boots ready to climb up the face. I walk a few steps and one of my Talonz (tm) falls off which is reassuring, but the guide sorts them out (I didn't tie them hard enough) and I am ready to go. The guides cut out steps in the ice and we climb up for about 40 minutes till we get to the top of the face. The pictures don't do justice to how huge this glacier is. As we are climbing up there is a nice groan as the glacier reminds us that it is alive - it moves about 2 metres at the bottom per day and 5 metres a day higher up. We will be on the ice for 6 odd hours.

Pictures (Left) - View from the Valley floor, (Right) - View of the glacier from the top of the terminal face.