We arrived in Franz Joseph, checked into the hostel then went off quadding! The quad bikes are actually really hard to control! I didn't think this was another dangerous activity until I fell off!! I accidently revved up on a ledge on the mud track and fell off the bike very dramatically and rolled 3 or 4 times onto the track, luckily no one was behind me to run me over!! I got up and waved for help to get the bike out but no one (nope not even Kev!!) noticed that I had fallen off :( so I just had to get back up again and get myself back on the track. Of course when Kev nearly fell of the verge a minute later everyone noticed that and went to help him!! So with that rocky (but very exciting) start we headed off along the tracks, we went across the glacier valley, through rivers, (that was brilliant), and then onto grass tracks where you really could pick up speed. At the end we went through a narrow dirt track through a forest, then out again in the river. Kev's bike got stuck in the mud at one point but he manged to get it free with a lot of revving! Great fun!

Franz Josef is an absolutely amazing place. The glacier itself is HUGE!! It took us an hour to hike across the glacier flats to reach the terminal face (the flats were where the glacier was 250 years ago) and then we got our boot crampons to begin the climb up onto the glacier. It's just one enormous chunk of solid ice with waves and hallows and streams running on top of and around it. The first part to get above the terminal face was quite steep and difficult and the flats after were more easy going. Its not really a "flat" area as its covered with little hills and streams not to mention glacier cracks, pools and ice caves. We actually got to jump and crawl through a few of those caves...

In parts where there was no trail the guide literally hacked a trail of steps into the ice so we could get over the various rises and falls. I really wanted a go of that ice pick but never asked. When we got to the top of one of the "waves" or ridges we had a chance to stop for a lunch break before making our decent. At this point we were about 3 hours on the ice and we were still only at the very start of the glacier. It's soo big that it spans more than 11km.

On the decent back to the Terminal face we ran into some trouble. The "path" we were following between two enclosed walls of ice had collected a pool of water in the middle with no way around. Our guide tried to hack steps into the side of the walls but the ice kept falling into the pool and it didnt look like we had a way around without getting into the freezing cold water. A second guide came along and together the two of them hacked enough ice away to fill the water, although not completely. We could just about walk across using the ice steps in the wall as well so we would not have to put our full weight on the ice. It was a close call and at times a few people were getting a bit nervous including me! The thought of getting stuck on a glacier so close to dark...

The rest of the hike down was uneventful and everyone was exhausted, we just couldnt wait to get down and home to a hot meal but we still had another hour hike infront of us to get back to the bus. That night everyone looked shattered but it was such a brilliant day and the glacier was soo surreal that it was worth it.