Hello again everyone!
Today I want to share a wee tour that I did a few months ago in Fox Glacier in New Zealand. I was working there and well... the glacier is the main attraction in this little town. People from all around the world visit it each summer when they are heading south towards Queenstown and Wanaka. Fox is sort of in the way so its a must stop for everyone traveling in the west coast of the south island.
The deal is simple. First, a guide gives everyone a little safety speech, showing a video that teaches you about the hazards on the ice and around the helicopter, pretty straightforward. Then they give you clothes, rain jackets, pants, boots and a backpack if you need one, everything water proof of course since it can rain at anytime on the ice. Then you take a bus that drives you to the heliport, about a 5 minute drive down the road. Then you hop on a helicopter, usually its 4 tourists and the pilot, you fly to the glacier (10 minutes flight give or take) it lands on the ice, everyone gets off and wait for the rest of the group to come. The pilot usually does a few flights since the groups tend to be of around 20 people. Once the whole gang is gathered on the ice, the guide or guides give us the crampons for everyone to set them on their boots and off we go.
Then we get to walk on the ice following the guide´s instructions, being careful not to trip and hopefully no phone ends up down on an ice crack. You get to see little waterfalls, lots of ice caves, streams of the freshest water ever and some wicked views of the valley.
You do a loop walk and return to the starting point where you remove the crampons, give them back to the guide and wait for the helicopter to pick you up to take you back down to town.
Its a nice activity to do on a nice sunny day but you never know about that. It could be hot and sunny down at the town and it could be pissing down heavily up in the glacier so... its good to always be prepared for rough weather. This is the reason why I opted to not take my camera with me, hence the meh quality pictures from my phone.
Along the walk the guide tells everyone many interesting things about the glacier, some are quite sad since it is retrieving so much that it should not be long until its all gone or unaccessible. Something that caught my attention was this: For the helicopters to be able to fly, they need the weather to be decent. Some days the tours are cancelled because it´s not safe to fly. But some days the day starts fine, the tourists fly to the ice and then the weather goes to shit and the pilot can´t fly back up to pick everyone up to get them to town. Scary huh? What happens in this cases? No biggie, the guides have everything stashed in the glacier to set up a camp when needed. So if some heavy rain comes out of nowhere, the guides set everything up, theres food, chocolates, drinks, gear to heat up soups and light meals, tents, sleeping bags and so on. Pretty much everything needed to spend the night up there hoping for the weather to clear up in the morning so everyone can return to their hotel rooms to finally have a hot shower. I found this so cool, how prepared they are for the worst, all in order to keep everyone safe.
Luckily (or not?) the weather was fine for us and we had no problem getting back to town. So... thats pretty much it. Thats´s what the Heli Hike tour is all about.
Now the goodies: Here are some pictures and 2 little clips (vertical sorry 🤦♂️🤦♂️) from January 2020 when I got to do this cool activity on my day off.
Hope you enjoy the views, and thanks for reading!
Fox Glacier township from the helicopter
The guides helpiong the tourists out of the Helicopter
Off it goes!
And the walk begins... some cool ice stairs on the way
Our guide Hannah making sure the trail is nice and safe
Me inside of a small ice cave
It got hot after walking around
More caves...
Walking down to the gathering point
Again, thanks for the support and hope you liked the pics!