Rogers Big Adventure

Franz Joseph was a lot of fun. I signed up for a full days hike, fully kitted out with crampons, boots, gloves and waterproof..ish pants and jacket. We had two guides, Donkey! and Julie. It was Julie's first day at guiding so she had Donkey to look over her shoulder and take over when we got up on the glacier. It takes about an hour to get to out onto the glacier and the walk up starts through sub tropical forest and then out to the face of the glacier which is all scree, debris pushed down from the glacier and material thrown out through blow holes from the river running under the glacier. the rocks here are carved over thousands of years when the Glacier was lower down the valley.

Although the Glacier is moving forward..umm another fact I cant remember, something like a meter a year, sounds about right, but this could be a small glitch as overall its retreated considerably even over the last decade.

You get a better idea of the scale of the Glacier when you take a closer look here at the people walking down.

At the beginning of the hike the guide broke us into groups depending on our estimated abilities, you know which group I headed for dont ya! I fell in behind a girl from Canada who was holding a good pace right behind the guide, but once we started climbing she let me take the lead. A Canadian guy she knew from home was out traveling with her for some of her trip and he was right on my heels. We ended up all having a great time. When your gloved up and soaking wet its hard to keep pulling out the camera, so somehow I got made the un official photographer, so I have a few shots of both Darryl and Sky.

Darryl and Sky are both in college going through a sports medical programe. Darryl has that competitiveness that kept us both trying to out do each other on the hike. I think we had Donkey a little worried a few times when we'd disappear and pop out on a ice ridge that we wernt supposed to be on.

Julie was a good sport all day, they make the new ones carry the big pack, I felt so bad for her. Another tough cookie who did the whole hike in shorts.

the hike took about 8 hours. I was really surprised that the next day my legs were pretty sore, but didnt stop me from going and giving this a go.


An indoor ice climbing wall! what a cool idea.

My legs and arms were really toast after doing that for just an hour.