Cold Chisel

Sun 8th March 2009 - NZ South Island

Woke up about 6am for my hike up Franz Josef.

I'd opted for the full day hike which was going take at least six hours and I was a bit concerned that my dickey knee was going to play up. For some reason my left kneecap goes a bit funny when walking steep slopes downhill and had suffered a bit towards the end of the Tongariro crossing. However, I hoped for the best and soldiered on regardless, getting kitted out in full climbing gear including thermals, large insulated jacket and trousers, beanie, woolen socks and huge boots with crampons (metal ice spikes!).

The glacier looks very intimidating from the bottom, but strangely beautiful with its icy blue glow and cloud covered peak.

We separated out into 5 groups led by 5 different guides. To volunteer for Group 1 you had to be confident that you were a fit-as-a-fiddle young buck, capable of pegging it up the ice quick as a flash, and chiseling away fresh manmade steps with a pick axe along the way. To qualify for Group 5 however, you could afford to be considerably less agile. There was obviously a sliding scale of fitness and laziness in-between, so with my dickey knee I played it safe and opted for Group 4. That was until they told us they had too many people, and asked if anyone would mind being relegated to join the real slowcoaches. I obliged and took my place alongside the lemons at the back (I am of course just being jocular and light-hearted, Group 5 were not really lemons, they were all nice people. Just very s-l-o-w).

The climb up was great fun, squeezing through icy passages (now, now) and breathing in the fresh glacial air. But when we reached out summit after a few hours of trekking, the heavens opened and the walk down was not an enjoyable experience. It was hideously cold and uncomfortable and with the slow kids in tow it seemed to take forever. By the time we made it down (the last ones on the bus) I was literally soaked through to the bone and so was everything in my backpack. Mercifully my camera was safe, but I wish the same could have been said for my ham sandwiches.

Back at the hostel by early afternoon, I was soggy, wet and miserable. In order to bring myself back to life, I parted with a few dollars and went down to the Glacier Hot Pools. My God, I tell you, that's some way to relax after climbing one of the South Island's biggest lumps of ice. 40 degree heated outdoor bathes surrounded by rain forest. Fricking magic.

One thing I decided whilst in Franz Josef was that following the end of my Stray trip (due to finish in Christchurch on 13th March), I was going to make a rather large detour in my planned schedule and go back to Australia for one week to visit C.B.

A rather frivolous decision, but one that was nevertheless immensely exciting. I somehow knew it was the right thing to do, even if it did cost me an extra few hundred dollars and meant delaying my flight to Fiji. I got online and via a painful half hour of bad Skype connections, managed to speak to Qantas and sort it. I would be in the Land of Oz again by 14th March.

I was excited and C.B. was thrilled too. The weeks in New Zealand had without doubt been great fun, but they had also remained somewhat bittersweet considering the time I had spent in Brisbane and what (or more appropriately who) I had left behind. I had to go back there, just for a little while longer. It might not have made sense to everyone, but it made sense to me. Still does.

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