A sad and soggy day

March 30, 2010


The Sog Blog:

Rain, rain and more rain but as Duncan says ‘well Dad it is a rainforest’. It poured all night long and at 1:30 I noticed that one of the windows in the cap was open as it was pooling on my side of the bed! We pulled the camper apart this morning and spread everything out in the cooking building to dry – fortunately there was a gas fireplace there which helped things along. We had a slow morning, answered a few emails, had a big breakfast, did some planning and hoped for the rain to stop – no luck. Finally around 2:00 we decided to go for it and headed into the Franz Josef glacier. It is about an hour long walk to the glacier face down the glacial moraine in the valley. The nice braided stream that we saw running down the valley yesterday had turned into a brown churning roaring river that cut the path in several places. The walls of the valley were running with waterfalls, a couple of them quite spectacular. Several river fords and lots of rain left us soaked and squishing before we even reached the face.

The glacier is wonderful however quite small, it has waxed and waned over the years and although it has grown over the last 4 or 5, it is in recession again. The face of the glacier is perhaps 400 meters across and 150 meter high with a gaping tunnel in the middle where the glacial melt water rushes out. Unfortunately the front of the glacier is inaccessible; you can only get within a couple hundred meters of it supposedly due to danger of rock fall. The only way onto the ice is to hire one of the guiding companies and join a group to the tune of about $400.00 for us for a three hour tour. I suspect the danger is not due to falling rock and ice but to loss of employment. Had there not been two groups with guides just coming off the ice we would have snuck up to the face – rats! We hope for better weather tomorrow further up the coast as we head to the Pancake Rocks.