Day 14 – Fox Glacier to Mt. Aspiring National Park

For the last 3 days, not a single heli-hike group had gone up the Fox Glacier due to bad weather. The area gets 260+ days of rain so the odds are not in your favor. However, this morning, there was a break. Not the sunny morning that weather.com predicted but it was not raining nor was it a white out. There were 2 groups of 10 that were going up at 8:30am. When it was our turn, we loaded up into the helicopter and zipped up the glacier in 6 minutes to land squarely on a landing pad marked with a few rocks. The pilot did have some fun at our expense. Before landing he did some aerial maneuvers, banking hard and pulling a few G’s including a crazy drop over a waterfall.

Once on the glacier, we put our crampons on and began hiking. Taking a helicopter up to the pristine ice falls was so much better than hiking the Terminal Face of Franz Josef that we did 3 years ago. Climbing a terminal face is absolutely exhausting and by the time you reach the top, your legs feel like jello. This time, we had all the energy and freedom to hike through caves, look down crevases, climb over blue pools and literally enjoy every moment. Since both of our groups were small, we never really saw each other during the 2-1/2 hours of hiking. It was quiet. The sun never broke through, but the fog and mist maintained their distance so we had excellent visibility and no wind. I loved it!!!!!!

When the helicopter returned for us, it was carrying a new batch of hikers. By the time we returned to the landing pad outside the little town, the clouds were already starting cover the mountains and glacier. By the time we pulled out of town, everything was socked in again like pea soup. Our group really caught a break!

We drove for almost 3 hours through thick fog. When we arrived at Mt. Aspiring National Park (where a good portion of LOTR was filmed) there was nothing to see but white. We pulled off into a DOC campsite for the night and are keeping our fingers crossed for good hiking weather with spectacular views. DOC campsites are basically undeveloped, no power and in the middle of nowhere. There is a rustic toilet system and that’s it. However, it’s only $9 USD per night.