Spectacular snow-covered mountains, immense crevassed glaciers and brilliant blue lakes seen on a flightseeing trip over the Fritz Range out of Franz Josef.
As we approached Franz Josef the heavens opened and it was still raining hard when we parked. We were hoping for at least reasonable weather particularly here as we had a scenic flight and trekking on the Fox Glacier planned. We went straight to Air Safaris who were taking us on the flight and checked the weather forecast. Taking their advice we changed our flight from tomorrow morning to the afternoon of the following day - we'd deliberately left ourselves plenty of time here for just this eventuality.
We headed off for lunch at Snakebite: fish and chips and Buffalo wings in a spicy sauce hit the spot! Unlike Andrew, I couldn't manage the triple chocolate pistachio slice as well!
The Franz Josef Glacier is only 5km from the village which takes its name, the glacier was named for Franz Josef of Austria. The village itself was another product of the gold rush in the late nineteenth century.
The following day we walked the Franz Josef Glacier valley as far to the glacier as it's possible to go. There is an ongoing danger of rock falls so the walk is 500m shorter than it has been in the past.
There's a large rock en route, called "Canavan's Knob"!, that it's possible to climb to get a first decent view of the glacier. It was rather a dull, misty day so long distance shots in particular are not great.
We were so lucky to have fabulous weather for our Grand Traverse flight over the mountains with Air Safaris, though we'd had to postpone from the previous day because the weather was so bad. Air Safaris were brilliant in rearranging things twice to fit in with our other activities.
It was a spectacular experience, following the course of the Waipo River over primeval forest to the coastal plain where the sea was covered with cloud up to the shore and the Okarito lagoon, a birdwatcher's paradise.
Then south and inland to Lake Matheson and the Cook River Flat before turning east to the main event - the mountains and glaciers.
We swung to the north of Fox Glacier over a smaller glacier which plunged steeply down the mountain, then we flew back across Fox Glacier.
We seemed to fly very close to the peaks and had fantastic views of Fox, Franz Josef, Murchison and other glaciers, Mount Tasman and Aoraki Mount Cook, and right over the Fritz Range to see the beautiful blue glacial lakes of Tekapo and Pukaki on the east side.
We flew right around Mount Tasman and Aoraki Mount Cook, doing a lovely lazy circle in the sky on the east side so that we were both able to see all of the spectacular views.
Our pilot, Tony, gave a running commentary all the way. Most of the information in the captions comes from what he told us or the company literature.
Our furthest point north was to view the Godley Glaciers and their glacial lakes, which feed the Godley River.
Then over the Murchison, New Zealand's second longest glacier at 16km, and the pristine white head of the Tasman Glacier. 50 m of annual snowfall cover a base of ice up to 800 m deep - the upper reaches of the glacier are a popular winter sports region.
A final flourish over the magnificent Franz Josef Glacier, which descends almost to the Tasman Sea, and Lake Mapourika, the largest of the West Coast lakes and a remnant of the last ice age, before returning to the airfield.
