Ninety foot high Thunder Creek Falls is the terminus of a small tributary draining into the Haast River.
Near the trailhead of the Blue Pools hiking trail - currently closed as the bridges are being replaced.
Coastline north of Haast, on the Tasman Sea.
Fox Glacier is basically a T-shaped intersection near the same-named glacier with a few little hotels, cafes, and lots of glacier-themed adventure outfitters. There are helicopter and small plane sightseeing flights, heli-hikes, bike rentals, hiking trails, etc. We checked into our hotel and drove a few miles to Lake Matheson for a 2.5 miles circuit hike around the lake.
Lake Matheson is a kettle lake formed by a decaying glacier. It’s in a temperate rain forest, a few miles from the Southern Alps to the east, and the Tasman Sea to the west. On a calm day, it’s a perfect reflecting pool NZ’s highest mountains, including Mount Cook and Mount Tasman. Alas, with low clouds and slight breeze, it wasn’t a perfect day - but it was still a nice walk.
Day 2 - on which we plan see the glaciers up close
Greg had a heli-hike scheduled for this afternoon at the Franz Josef glacier. I’d opted for a less strenuous morning glacier flyover and landing on the Fox glacier.
The company had changed my flight time twice, saying they needed to move me around to accommodate larger groups. Greg and I walked over at 7:20 this morning, only to learn that low clouds had cancelled all the early flights. They said to come back at 8:10. We went back to the hotel for breakfast. The next flight was also cancelled, so we walked to a geocache. Third time was the charm, as I took off with a family of 5.
We wove through the Fox glacial valley under the clouds. Until 2013, you could walk to the glacier terminus. Today, it has receded far up this gravel-coated valley and you can reach the glacier only by helicopter.
This is NZ’s second biggest glacier, 8.1 miles long. Its average depth is 325 feet.
We broke through above the clouds and landed on the Fox Glacier 32 sq km accumulation basin.
We’re at about 6500 feet. Mount Tasman, directly behind me, is NZ’s second highest mountain at 11,365 feet.
We flew north to the accumulation field of the Franz Josef Glacier and headed down its flow towards the namesake town.
It’s a half hour by car back to our starting point in the town of Fox Glacier, but only 3 minutes by helicopter. The clouds were coming in quickly and they grounded the flights after we landed. So, lucky for us.
Greg and I drove to Franz Josef for his three hour heli-hike, but it was cancelled due to the lowering heavy clouds. He got on a cancellation list for a later flight similar to mine. We had a nice lunch in town, watched a film about the Westland Tai Poutini National Park (where we’re located), and went to check the status of his new flight. Unfortunately, by then it was raining steadily and all flights were cancelled for the rest of the day. So we headed back to Fox Glacier village and settled in for the evening.
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