NZ: Day 9
The heli-hike. The company running it wasn’t the most organized in the world so there was a whole lot of standing around before we actually got up and running. They kitted us out with socks, boots, and jackets to wear and then loaded us into helicopters to fly us up to the third icefall on Franz Joseph Glacier. The flight, my first in a whirlybird, was awesome. I want my own helicopter. Up on the ice we were given our crampons and brief lesson in walking on glaciers. Being as I had done this before, I pretty much ignored them and just enjoyed being up on the ice. We did about a two hour hike on the top of the glacier. Our group was eleven people. There was one girl in it, Sarah, who was absolutely terrified of walking on the ice and walked up front with the ice guide the entire time, who did a really good job of taking care of her. Given that I’d done this before and felt comfortable, I hung out in the rear (the ice guide asked those of us who felt confident to hike in the back so the weaker people would be up near him in case they needed help) with an Australian couple.
When we reached the end of the hike out, it was at a fairly deep pond that had formed on the glacier. More than ten feet deep and probably about 5 feet in diameter. Our guide said that if three people from our group went in, he’d jump in too. So the large Asian dude in the group jumps in. My sister jumps in. I wasn’t going to jump in, because I was wearing jeans and knew they would be a bitch if they got wet, but after two people had gone in, there was no way I was letting our guide get away dry. So I jumped in. It was cold, but not impossibly so. I wouldn’t have wanted to hang out in there for more than the ten seconds or so I was in there, but once you were out and it started evaporating off in the hot sun, you actually felt really good. Then a large German guy from the other group came and jumped in and finally one of the girls from our group jumped into. Faced with the five people who had done it, our guide climbed up on to a higher ledge and dove into the pool. He really hadn’t expected any of us to take him up on it, let alone enough to force him to get wet.
I had an extra shirt with me, but I ended up giving it to the girl who had jumped in because she had cotton tanktops on, which weren’t going to dry worth shit. I had on a synthetic hiking shirt which dry really fast. So I was a little bit more wet on the way back than I could have been, but it made someone’s day a lot better. Scott, the Australian dude I was hiking with, got a video of me jumping into the ice pool which he is going to email to me. Got some excellent fish and chips at The Breezes, a little cafe with outdoor seating where we soaked up some sun (warming us up from our arctic plunge).
Finished up the day with a drive across the island to Christchurch. It was a drive on the winding mountain highway 73, which is a lot of fun to drive. I had a couple of equally skilled, if not more skilled drivers on my tail for almost all of it, which really pushed my driving, but in a good way. Given the number of really poor drivers on the road here, it was nice to have some good ones who made my drive more interesting. We zigged and zagged through the mountains for a couple hours (the same four cars in a row) and then the road leveled out and we all cruised into the Christchurch area.