Travel: A world of ice

BY JILL WORRALL

Exploring Franz Josef is a family affair for Jill Worrall.

If this story has a stamp of maternal pride, forgive me and feel free to turn over to the sport section.

However, if you can bear it, I'll take you into a world of ice, one of the most dynamic forces to shape our planet.

This is the catch-them-while-you-can realm of glaciers and in particular one of the world's fastest flowing – Franz Josef, in the Westland Tai Poutini National Park.

It's also one of the steepest glaciers and one of the few to descend almost to sea level into temperate forest.

My son Jono, who did all his schooling in Geraldine, is a guide here, working for the Ngai Tahu-owned Franz Josef Glacier Guides.

Five days a week for the past year he has taken parties of mostly overseas tourists on the 45-minute walk to the terminal of the Franz and where necessary cajoled them up the terminal face and then guided them into icy, crevass-slashed terrain that extends 12km back into the Southern Alps. Then he walks them out again.

He takes the fit, the "not as fit as I thought I was", the complainers, the enthusiasts and the won't-listen-to-instructions clients and introduces them to a landscape that few could tackle safely on their own.

As a tour guide specialising in taking Kiwis overseas, I recognise the personality types. They can be demanding enough for me in my late 40s to deal with.

Add to that the challenges of the natural hazards that abound in an alpine environment and the physical demands of wielding a heavy ice axe all day to cut and clear steps and he's out of my league. I'm full of admiration ... and that's the end of the maternal brag.

I first saw the Franz Josef when I was about 10 years old. Back then the terminal face was much further back up the valley and almost everyone you met on the short walk to the glacier itself was a Kiwi.

I can't remember seeing anyone venturing very far on to the ice itself though – back then, the Franz was, for most of us, something to admire from a safe distance. I never dreamed that one day I'd get to clamber among its ice cliffs and crevasses.

But nowadays, several hundred people a day are guided on to the ice, either starting with a walk from the carpark or on a heli-hike that involves a short helicopter ride up on to the glacier itself and then exploration by foot. As it is in a national park, Franz Josef falls under the authority of the Department of Conservation which actively discourages people from climbing the glacier unless they are either an experienced climber or have a guide with them.

The fatalities earlier this year on the Fox Glacier are ample evidence of why it is not a good idea to flout the guidelines.

So, recently instead of having a well-earned day off, Jono took me up on the glacier. My first challenge was putting on crampons. We did this just a few metres from the terminal face and the sight of spry 20-pluses climbing up what looked like a near-vertical cliff of shifting glacial moraine did nothing for my concentration.

It was only when Jono mentioned that if some of his more air-headed clients could do it then surely his Mum could, that I applied myself properly to the task.

It was also at this point that I reminded him that just five months ago I'd had a total hip replacement. This was going to be its first big test; this time a year ago I could not even tie up my own left shoelace or turn a bicycle pedal. Was this going to be one crampon too far?

My crampons squeaking on the rock, I made my way gingerly to the first ropeline and series of steps. Beside us milky water gushed from an ice cavern gouged near the centre of the glacier's snout.

Every now and then a trickle of rock would ripple down the precipitous slope nearby.

I decided not to look down either side of the narrow ridge we were negotiating. Already the bed of the Waiho River seemed a long way below.

Each morning it is the guides' job to check the ropelines, recut steps (glaciers, although at first appearing immobile, are continuously in motion and can move many metres a day).

Ice melt and the regular foot traffic means that guides have to constantly reshape the steps during the day, which is why they all carry heavy axes.

After just a few pauses to admire the view (OK, it was to get my breath back) I emerged at the top of the terminal face – my new hip was still with me and I had not tripped on my crampons.

Ice, dark with moraine, surrounded us like mine tailings. Mica glinted from the slivers of schist.

From here we plunged into the ice – sunlight sparkled on the crystalline surfaces and illuminated the aquamarine blues that lay beneath.

We passed through canyons of sinuous, glassy walls where thin layers of glacial dust lay trapped in rippled layers.

There were moulins too – depressions where once water had swirled to create near circular depressions.

This was not the quiet frozen world I expected ... water gurgled and splashed under our feet.

We stopped at a water-worn cave and peered down to see a subterranean stream rushing with water that had fallen as snow before I was born. It takes about two years just for a snow flake to transform into a single sand-sized particle of ice.

From the top of an ice cliff there was a close-up view of the icefield that lay higher up the glacier. Here the river of ice tumbled down in a tangle of seracs (ice peaks) and yawning crevasses, their depths glowing a luminous blue.

I asked Jono if he had been in the icefield.

"I sat here once and watched slabs of ice the size of cars falling down from there," he said.

On the glacier's northern flank, the valley's rock walls were striated with scratches hewn into the rock by the glacier in an earlier advance. The ice was shaped in smooth low hummocks, a complete contrast to the canyons we had just passed through.

Even after just one year, Jono said he could see the depth of ice against the valley wall had decreased. During the 1980s and 90s the Franz was one of the few glaciers in the world to advance, but today its terminal face seems to be stationary. The still-high snowfalls (up to 30 metres a year) in the nevee or snowfield at its head are balancing the thaw lower down. How long this will continue, no-one is sure.

We crossed the glacier to the far side – Jono cutting out steps and creating showers of ice crystals.

A waterfall cascaded down from a hanging valley above. Here meltwater was accumulating in pools and pouring out slashes in the ice known as compression caves.

We ate lunch perched on boulders trapped in the ice.

There were no keas about but Jono pointed to a neat hole in the top of his backpack. The Franz keas have worked out exactly where the guides have buried a snack in their bags and extract them with surgical precision.

Before we attempted the descent down the moraine (something I was dreading) Jono wanted to show me an ice cave. About half his height, the cave was illuminated with aquamarine light from a shaft about three metres in.

I had assumed we were there just to admire it. But no, apparently I was going to have to climb through it.

The cave was fluted like a shell, the blue ice smooth and slippery as glass, and as cold as ... well, ice.

Even my crampons struggled to find a grip. I was on a narrow ledge, beyond which there was a dark void and the sound of churning water. I didn't think the gap between the ledge and the far wall was wide enough for me to shoot through into the underground stream, but I did suspect that becoming wedged there might not be the kind of post-operative physio my surgeon had in mind.

There is no going back, however – for one thing, Jono was in the way (a great way to stop a mum planning a rapid retreat) and anyway, I was not sure I could turn around safely.

Jono was the epitome of calm as he pointed out my next hand and footholds. No doubt the ignominy that would be attached to having to get help to rescue a wedged mother would have meant I would have got out even if he had had to hack the entire roof off the cave.What was more, I was not going to be that mother. I emerged up a vertical shaft, relieved but elated and with the precious newly rebored leg still facing the right way. Jono disappeared back into the cave to find the sunglasses he lost while extracting his mother. They had been swept away.

Slightly euphoric, I found even the climb down the terminal face did not seem that bad and there was the distraction of the view down the Waiho Valley, and in the distance, the sunlight glinting on Lake Mapourika.

While I was taking off my crampons, I decided this had been one of my most memorable travel experiences, and there have been some strong contenders over the years.

Few places in the world offer such an accessible glacier experience and yet so few Kiwis give it a go. Do it while you can, and if you find a pair of sunglasses, please let me know.

- © Fairfax NZ News