Franz Josef Glacier

As you head north on the West Coast, the first of the two main coastal glaciers you come to is Fox. But by then we were getting pounded by an industrial-strength rainstorm, so, with nothing to do, we thought we'd head up to the second one, Franz Josef, to see what was happening there. And guess what? More rain! We decided that rather than getting drenched, after three nights (one in a backpackers and two in a tent), this would be a good time to treat ourselves to a hotel room, in the town of Franz Josef. We finally cleaned up, cooked a real-ish dinner, and hoped for the clouds to break the next day.

As we climbed out of our hotel room the next morning, we were treated to views like the ones you see here in the picture containing buildings. Looks like an awesome place to live. The rest are from the Franz Josef glacier itself. Most importantly, not a cloud in the sky! So we got in four different hikes/walks, beachtime (more on that in the next post), and good food outside. All-in-all, day five was a great day.

In one picture here, you'll see some hikers climbing the face of the glacier. We planned on joining one of those hikes the next morning (day 6)...but we ran into problems that night (night 5). Rather than camp, we were goofing around so much on our one full day (day 5) in the area that things got too late to make camp north of town at the Dept. of Conservation campsite (the sunset walk around Lake Matheson contributed to a late departure). So we unadvisedly decided to take a stab at sleeping in the Subaru. Back in the old days, Julie and I often crashed in the back of my pickup, El Rojito, so we figured it wouldn't be a problem.

Neither of us noted, until it was way too late to change our plans, that the Subaru's back area, even with the seats folded as intended to allow sleeping, is about a foot shorter than the length of my old pickup's bed, and, coincidentally, me. So I 'slept' that night by alternating between folding my legs in right angles at the knees, putting them up on the front seat's headrest, and, to Julie's dismay, going diagonal. She barely got a wink. We were up at 5am. Upon deciding that we were in no shape (in terms of energy or safety-consciousness) to do a glacier hike, and given that the weather was nice, the drive up the West Coast to our next stop seemed like a better option. We're both bummed about the Subaru debacle, and we wish we'd been able to do the glacier hike. (Lesson: don't try to sleep in a Subaru Legacy.) At least you are permitted to walk, as we did, right up to the terminus of the glacier without any guide, so we did get a great perspective on the ice.

And that second night had great views of the stars, featuring the Southern Cross.