Day 8 - Franz Josef Glacier

We got up early to do a hike called Alex Knob that Matt had done previously and had great views and saw lots of Keas (world's only alpine parrot, native to new zealand).  The clouds were a bit low that day so we weren't expecting very good views but we had some great views of the glacier, the Tasman Sea and we even  saw 1 Kea.

This was our view on one side.  You could see to the Tasman Sea.

The other side was view of the glacier.  The clouds are so low they are concealing the top of the glacier.

Our not very good picture of the Kea.  It soared right above us but we were to enthralled watching it that we didn't think to take a picture until it flew over to this cliff and sat down.  Sadly, these cool birds are endangered (see link above).

As we rose up the hike we got further into the clouds.  We couldn't see anything when we got to the top.  Oh well.  It was still a good place to stop for lunch after the challenging 4 hour hike up.

After we finished Alex Knob, we did another short hike to Lake Wombat and then did the Glacier Valley Walk.  If you click on this picture to make it bigger, you can see there are people in the bottom right to help you get an idea of how huge this glacier is.

There were tons of waterfalls coming down the hills of the valley.  By this point we had hiked 14 miles between the 3 hikes that day so I took my boots and socks off and soaked my feet for a bit in the pools of the waterfall.  It felt so good!

This cut out of a Ranger tells you this is as close to the glacier as you can go.

By the end of the day we had done about 16 miles of hiking-12 of it on very steep terrain climbing over boulders and roots and we were exhausted.  We headed back to the holiday park.  It was all we could do to make ourselves dinner and go to bed.