Climbing a glacier- Franz Josef

We arrived in Franz Josef passing more amazing scenery, including beautifully pale blue coloured rivers which were glacier fed. We're now at a really nice hostel called the rainforest complete with its own twenty-person hot tub. We also had a little walk earlier and saw a good view of the glacier that we'll be climbing tomorrow. The weather is still sunny so we are praying it will hold till we've gone. 

Our hike this morning didn't start till 10.30 so we had our first lie in. This was, however, slightly spoiled by the German girl we're sharing the room with blowing her nose constantly. I gave her the evil eye after the third time she woke me but I think that just spurred her on.

Anyway, we headed off to the glacier centre (late) which was a good move because we actually managed to get our stuff first. We set off on our climb and were a bit apprehensive because we were only doing the half day so we didn't know how much we'd get to see. Luckily, though, we made sure we got into the top group and our guide said we could try and do a lot more if we pushed the pace. We walked through a forest first which was really pretty and then got to a valley which had been formed by the glacier. Apparently you can tell that its glacier formed because its U shaped rather than a V shaped one formed by water.

It was a long (long) trek to the bottom of the glacier but the valley was impressive with huge waterfalls. When we got close to the glacier we had to put on crampons (spikes on your shoes) ready to walk on the ice. The ice is melting constantly and gets pushed back an average of five metres daily; while we were there we heard huge crashes of ice falling and could see where chunks were floating into the river. As a result I was feeling a little nervous to begin the icy part of our trek.

We started our walk on some dirty grey looking ice which was impressive but didn't compare to the blue/white ice that we moved onto. The trail we took then was crazy- we had to use ropes to pull ourselves up some parts. We also went through the tightest spaces where you could barely put one foot in front of the other and crawled through a cave of ice. On our way back down there was a dramatic moment when our guide stepped on some ice that shifted down and he cut his leg- it was fine but we had to be careful on that area (thinking skinny thoughts). After getting back from the glacier we went to the hot pools that we got free with our hike; it was so nice to chill out after hiking for five hours.