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Milford part 1

admin — Sat, 30 May 2009 01:52:41 +0000

From Riverton we headed to a town called Te Anau and stayed the night. Oddly enough, the next day we ran into the next Active tour group guide picking up his bicycles before heading into Milford Sound. Strangely enough, that is exactly where we were headed for the night. We had planned on doing a hike up to a mountain saddle (Gertrude’s Saddle). We had heard it had unbelievable views of the sound and mountains. Well, need I say it again, the weather hadn’t been too great and so the hike didn’t happen. At least not the whole hike. We did get about half way up, but after that it became solid ice and we didn’t want to have to come back down on that. And since the clouds and fog were settling in, there would have been no views anyway, so we didn’t feel bad heading back down. We were pretty much in snow from the beginning of the hike – i don’t think the Gertrude’s Valley gets that much sun. It was fun to be in the snow again though. Here are a couple pictures from our attempted hike. The first one is of ice that looks to me like an angel fish.

Just us in the snow!

by Colin and Andre’a Feldhaus

Franz Josef Glacier Hike

admin — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:21:54 +0000

A few weeks back, our boss took some of us up on a full day glacier hike. Words can’t really describe the splendor of it all, but maybe pictures will get closer.

The sky was really this blue color in the morning of the hike. It looked surreal.

The initial ascent.

Our fearless guide…

our very confused, fearless guide…

colin having a great time!

By Colin and Andre’a Feldhaus

ice….

admin — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 05:54:02 +0000

(Andre’a) So, a couple weeks ago, we had a lot of rain. And by a lot of rain, i mean… A LOT OF RAIN! (Probably more than San Angelo, sees in a few years!!) The storms weren’t that unusually big, it’’s just that we had 4 of them right after another. Our hostel grounds ended up getting flooded pretty bad and had some plumbing issues, but other than that we survived.

So along with all the rain, came other catastrophes as well. The Fox Glacier (45 minutes away) had major problems. The road to get out to the glacier was washed away… with some vehicles stranded on the other side… and still are. As I hear right now, it looks like they won”t even be able to reopen it up for another 3 months or so… That’s right in the middle of the peak season too… bummer! But good for the Franz Glacier Guides! They are and will be pretty busy for awhile since they are the only glacier open. As far as the Franz Josef Glacier goes, they had some ice collapse causing the cave in the front to get bigger and tons of ice to float down the gushing river! We were lucky on our day off to run into a fellow Okaritoan (who is a glacier guide) at the Franz Josef coffee shop, Full of Beans. (I love that name!) Anyway, he told us to check out the glacier… it would be well worth a visit and would be so different than the last time we were there. So we did…

This is the “new” glacier. You might be able to compare it to some pictures from a previous post about the Franz Josef glacier. As you can see, it’s still a bit rainy outside.

Here are some big chunks of ice that were laying on the riverbed. Amazing!

You can kinda see the large pieces of ice next to my feet. Although they do blend in with the background a bit… but look how large they are!

Colin trying to be a “macho man”…. I mean, he IS a macho man…..

I like how you can see the rain falling in the background.

Me and my sissy piece of ice! My hands are getting really cold!!

by Andre’a Feldhaus