Glacier Hike, Franz Josef
Down at the Hiking Centre first thing in the morning, we were given out kit for the day. This included a waterproof jacket and boots complete with crampons. Although we were told that it would be warm on top of the glacier (go figure?!), I wasn’t taking any chances, so I had come dressed in about 7 layers. Turns out it was pretty warm on top the glacier, so I had to lug around my layers all day! We started our trek to the bottom of the glcaier, which took an hour alone to reach. Then we split up into groups of around 10 – 15 and we were each given one guide. I was in a group with some of the girls: Sam, Roxan & Emma and some others who weren’t on Kiwi Experience. The hardest part of the hike was the first section, where we had to climb about a million steps which had been created previously by our guides. As we reached the tops 0f the stairs, we began to see ice holes tunnels, made by sun melting away at the ice. Around 12pm we stopped for lunch, Sam and I discovered that we had blisters at the back of our feet caused by the boots, so we had to plaster ourselves up before heading onwards. We went a little further uphill, and by 2pm Sam & I were so ready to turn back down again as we were in so much pain from our feet. We only trekked for another hour or two before beginning our descent, which was luckily a lot easier on our feet. However it did take us another hour or two to make it back to the bus and I think if I was to do another glacier hike again, I would opt for the half-day hike as we did not see an awful lot more on the full-day hike.
That evening, we had a quiet one in the hostel bar. Another Kiwi bus joined us that evening, s0 Matt, Liam & I went for a few drinks with a couple of the girls. We didn’t make it a late one as Matt was off skydiving again the next morning and had to be up at 6am.
Mhairi's Travel Blog 