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| Looking down the Franz Josef glacier - its retreat is obvious |
The wild wet winds of the Tasman Sea wash New Zealand's west coast with torrents of rain. The sheer weight of winter snows compress into a series of low altitude glaciers that scrape their way towards the sea.
Two are on the tourist itinerary - Franz Josef and Fox.
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| One of the helicopters dwarfed by the ice fall |
In fine weather, helicopters rise from their eponymous villages carrying hikers to landing spots carved into their higher reaches.
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| Our safety briefing |
Glib young guides wield ice picks with thor-like bravado and stride the ice channeling Indiana Jones. They gird us in crampons and caution us on the dangers of crevasses and inattention.
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| Getting ready to start our hike |
And inattentive we are. Below us the glacier plunges into the jagged darkness of the barren valley, cascading dangerously towards the sea.
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| Heading out |
Above us the blue ice tumbles over resistant ridges, crumpling into tortuous ice falls that creak and slip a meter a day.
We stay close to one another, awed by the heaving, plastic mass below our feet.
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| Under the watchful eye of our guides |
We are small in this sculpted landscape of white and blue; the surface softened by weeks of steady rain, rivulets dropping into bottomless caverns to join the gushing meltwaters at the glacier's snout.
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| The guides constantly cut new trails |
A false footing, straying too close to a crumbling lip, venturing under a weakened thrust of ice; all potentially fatal missteps.
The danger, despite our guide's admonitions, is ever-present.
But the beauty sculpted by nature's forces is otherworldly.
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| Aboard the helicopter over the Franz Joseph Glacier |
And in the end, we return to the tourist trail with new visions of the strange and beautiful world we inhabit.
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