First Steps on Ice

Graham, known as Grazer, was our guide. there was in fact a choice. You could go with Kirk, much younger, or you could go with Grazer, who probably can't remember his 50th birthday that well. Naturally, I chose experience over youth. "This is," explained Grazer at the face of the glacier, "A very dynamic environment." As he said this two sizeable chunks of rock dislodged themselves from the blackened ice of the glacier face and crashed fifty feet to the ground. "A Japanese tourist was killed, just over there," he pointed with his ice pick, "Got too close, didn't listen to advice, an entire slab of ice collapsed on top of him."

We had started an hour before with a briefing and boot fitting. I drew a pair of enormous leather boots, the type that Wynter would have worn to climb the Matterhorn, and a pair of crampons. Then it was on to a bus for the ten minute ride to the car park at the foot of the glacier. It is a majestic sight, a huge swathe of rugged ice plunging down from the mountains above. We began with a walk across the boulder strewn morain left by the glacier as it retreated many years ago, though it appears it is now advancing again. Then there was a very strenuous climb up through the trees on the hillside to bring us to a vantage point above the glacier, from where we climbed down again to the glacier itself.

Initially, the surface of the glacier is disappointing. It is not pristine white, but dirty, like slush in London after a few days. However, a few centimetres below the dirty surface (the dirt being dust carried by the wind from the nearby hillsides), the ice is a glorious green colour, almost an emerald green. This is the result of the filtering effect of the ice, which removes all traces of red light and leave only the blues and the greens.

Stamping crampons into hard ice is easy, particularly when the ice is not that hard, softened by the sunshine. But the air was cold, chilled by the wind funnelling down off the huge ice field above. We stumped on up the glacier for about an hour, crossing small crevasses and skirting large holes, where the melting water creates traps for the unwary. It was exhilarating to know that we were tramping on about 80 metres of ice beneath our feet. It was also very surprising to learn that the glacier is moving down the hillside at up to two metres a day, lubricated by the water melting beneath.

Grazer seemed genuinely fond of his glacier. He and his colleagues monitor it constantly, watching how it melts and regerates. In spite of global warming, or perhaps because of it, the Fox Glacier is actually advancing at the moment. There has been so much snow falling on the accumulation zone which needs to go somewhere and that somewhere is the glacier. It is thought qthat with increased global warming New Zealand will become wetter, which means more snow at altitude, which means yet more snow in the accumulation zone which means that the glacier will advance. Not that it will advance as far as it did in 1750 when it was a full two kilometres longer during that time's mini ice age.

It was all very interesting but it did leave me wondering about the effects of tourism. Both the Franz Josef and Fox
Glaciers are like honeypots to tourists. There is a constant coming and going of buses and cars. The pressure of tourism is proved by the difficulty of finding a hotel room, even in a town like Franz Josef with a multitude of places to stay. That mass tourism may not be entirely benign is hardly a new thought, but I have not seen its effect before in a country like New Zealand, that can't be described as third world or even second world. My question is, are we seeing beginning of a second wave of destruction, following the first brought about by the original settlers who stripped the land of timber and introduced foreign species like the stoat and the possum which have both proved so disastrous for indigenous wildlife?