boltsintotheblue   Le mariage and beyond

We eventually arrived in Franz Josef village, well more a tourist village designed to serve the many hikers and backpackers that pass through here, full of motels, campsites, touring outfits and a few bars and restaurants. With Jo already having done a hike on the glacier when she was here 10 years ago, we were keen to do something different and new to both of us, so we settled on a full day of Ice-climbing up on the glacier. This would involve hiking up into the heart of the ice field before setting up ropes and attacking slippery routes with full-on crampons and ice axes. (I just wanted to do it because I actually got to use an ice axe properly rather than just longingly test swing them in our local Mountain Equipment store in Vancouver….)

So the next day we were in for an early start and met the guides at 7:30am for kit-out before beginning the Trek up the glacier, passing over the moraine deposits left as the glacier retreated. as we crossed over the river before getting on to the glacier proper. Before long we were tooled up with crampons on and followed our guides into the depths, with them expertly cutting steps with their pick axes (yes they looked like they were heading off to the mines when we first met them!).

I have to say that getting right down into the crevasses surrounded by walls of translucent blue ice and narrow passages was amazing, before popping up over brittle little ice ridges. We really felt like we were in the glacier not just on it. After about 30mins clawing our way through and over our guides found a good spot to set up in a small crevasse maybe 40ft deep. Ropes were set, and our first foray into ice-climbing began. I have to say that despite the fact that you are only ever attached by tiny little spikes on your feet or ice axes, I actually felt more secure than I have done rock climbing in the past (this may just be because I’m a rubbish rock climber as I’ve only done it a handful of times).

Towards the end of our day and having tried a few different routes including a very challenging overhang, we heard the rumble of thunder overhead. This wasn’t unexpected as the forecast was for rain in the afternoon and we’d already had a few spits. We carried on packing up and were just on the verge of leaving when we heard another giant thunder roll. Our guides quickly advised us this was no thunder but was actually a rockfall. We couldn’t see it from the bottom of our crevasse but the earlier “thunder” had been small rockfalls. Now we had the big one and the deep raucous noise reverberated menacingly around the valley. We were told to keep our heads down and eyes closed – my first thought being that by acting like a child hiding behind their hands and pretending that it wasn’t there didn’t actually protect us from it was actually false – we were soon engulfed by a dark black cloud of billowing rock dust.

This was serious, a huge slab on the north side of the valley had come crashing down probably less than 200ft from where we were. There was a scurry of activity on the radios as our guides radio’d in our position and safety condition and listened in on reports from other tour groups elsewhere on the glacier. We were given the all clear to move and to get on down the glacier as quickly as was safely possible. We got cracking but even on the way down there were smaller chunks of mountain still crashing down and I managed to get a few shots of one of the small ones and it’s after effects. We were climbing almost directly in the line of the rockfall but thankfully towards the right hand side of the valley as you look at the picture so the rocks would have had to crash through a multitude of large crevasses to get to us. We descended safely off the glacier but for some of the “lucky?” groups that were higher up and above the rockfall it was deemed too unsafe for them to cross below it so there was a flurry of helicopters shuttling them off the ice – I have to say I was a bit gutted to not be getting a free jellywopper ride but glad to be safe and lived to tell the tale.

Upon return to the office our guides told us that that was the biggest slide that the valley had seen in over 3 decades.