Our 3/4 day glacier walk tour didn’t start until 10:30am. Debbie & I had plenty of time to make breakfast and prepared sandwishes for lunch/snacking. Our first day of breakfast, as well as many mornings later, we had fried egg and oatmeal with milk. Our lunch was even better. We had baguette with pate and black pepper beef cold cut - umm, yummy!
The weather wasn’t good. The rain was heavy, but it didn’t stop us to explore one of the fastest moving glacier in the world at Franz Josef. The hike tour provided us with full gears from head to toe. I showed up with 4 layers of tops and a pair of shorts as their recommendation. After we were all dressed and ready, we took a short bus ride to the park and hiked our way to the glacier.
The pissing rain just made a paddle of water became a pond, and small tame creek became a vicious river. It made the hike more interesting, but our hiking boots couldn’t hold the water out and keep our feet dry. Our feet were soaking wet before we set our foot on the blue mountain. Plus all of the stuff in our backpack were soaking wet as well. We walked pass the Alpine fault line and learnt the expected earth quark is over due for some time already, which made us think if we would be that “lucky” to experience the shake today during the hike - well, not likely.
At the foot of the glacier, we put on our last piece of gear - crampons. Another tour guide showed up and splited the original tour to two, each 8 people and started the galcier hike. The entire hike was about 6 hours, and the ice time was about 3 to 4 hours. We hiked thru the bottom, thru the ice cracks, and slowly made our way to the top of the glacier. It is hard for me to describe the experience, and I don’t know if any pictures could do it justice. Franz Josef glacier is moving and fast with approx. 12 meters a day. The sceneries there do change quite often. To make the hike earier for the tour, they axed the stair steps out and set up ropes as hand rails. As we were closed to the end of the hike, the sun came out and brought the magnificent colours out from the surrounding. We could see the lush green from the rain forest near us, and the blue from the glacier, which just seem brighter with the beautiful blue sky. The vicious river returned to a tame creek. Although we were tired from the long hike, but our foot steps seem lighter and faster because of the sun.
Back to the town, many people were out at patios enjoying the sun. Debbie and I used that chance to lay our papers out to dry, but it wasn’t fast enough before we decided to shop for our same sandwish ingredients for tomorrow lunch, and a can of cream corn to make soup for dinner with the left over pizza from the night before.
That night I found my hair dryer had another mean of usage in additional to styling my hair. I used it to dry my soaking wet clothing from the pouring rain in the morning. I wouldn’t have brought it to the trip if I was only planning to this backpack tour. Now hair dryer is on my travelling list to bring.