Activity Summary
Wednesday 8th February - Day 160
Drive to Franz Josef via Haast
Blue Pools
Fantail Falls
Gates of Haast
Thunder Creek Falls
Roaring Billy Falls
Thursday 9th February - Day 161
Luke: Mt Fox summit with Fox Glacier views
Nicola: Lower Fox Glacier & Lake Matheson cafe
Lake Matheson cafe
Friday 10th February - Day 162
Chill day
Okarito lagoon
Okarito Trig walk
Saturday 11th February - Day 163
Luke: Alex Knob summit with Franz Josef Glacier views
Nicola: Lower Franz Josef Glacier & cafe
Drive to Hokitika
Summary
Fox Glacier
The town itself is very small and after speaking to others we had met, it was very expensive. Franz Josef was a lot bigger and the 30 minute drive back on ourselves to get here was well worth it rather than staying for a night and moving on.
The glacier is hella cool. The Mount Fox route was hard work but the view once topping out was absolutely immense.
Franz Josef Glacier
Really nice town actually. A lot of bars and the town has a good vibe about it. It helped that the hostel we were in was great so it made our time here a lot more relaxed.
Will say the glacier is not as cool as Fox and it has retreated an unreal amount since 2000. The walks around Franz are a lot easier for good views of it though.
Accommodation
Franz Josef - Glowworm Hostel
Number of nights - 3
Price per night per person - £16
A really great hostel. It didn't try to be fancy or anything other than just a chill and comfortable place for backpackers to eat and socialise in. It was laid out so that people would be able to eat and talk with randos so easily with comfortable armchairs dotted all over the large communal space.
The kitchen was a bit shit and the hobs were barely functional. However they cooked a decent enough veg soup every evening so kind of removed the need to cook dinner anyway.
We were in a 4 bed dorm room with a private bathroom which was pretty comfy and our roommates were pretty decent throughout. Fortunately for Luke’s morning bowel movements there were toilets in the main building he could use rather than gas out the poor girls he was sharing a room with.
Diary
The drive between Wanaka and Franz Josef, our next campsite location, is quite a journey at between 4 and 5 hours and between the Haast mountainous region. But there were plenty of short stop off points along the way and it was an incredibly pretty drive which really breaks up the journey.
Nicola was pretty tired having not slept much the night previously because Luke had gassed her out and was snoring - she was not impressed and was silently seething all morning. Luke blamed it on the abnormally warm weather and the lack of sleeping bag liner to contain the beast. So she spent the first hour or so recovering from the ordeal of the night as we drove along lakes Wanaka and Hawea. Luke got out for a very short stop over at Lake Hawea.
The first properly planned stop was at the Blue Pools of Haast. It was a short 40 minute out and back walk, so pretty easy, and the attractions were wonderfully blue glacial rivers with a few brave people having a dip. Having seen much of the same we didn’t spend all that long here and there were bitey things.
Next on the list was Fantail Falls which was aite.
We stopped at the gates of Haast simply because Luke enjoyed the name, but was otherwise just the river flowing under the bridge we had driven across.
The Thunder Creek Falls was a much more impressive stop on our route. The waterfall was high and had a pretty high volume of water coming down and the fact that a Tiki bus stopped to allow its passengers to sight see must mean it's the shizzle. At this point we couldn’t help but talk about how difficult and limiting it must be to bus or hitchhike around NZ - perks to travelling when old, we have (had) money. Although if you’re a lone guy wanting to get your end away, it seemed like there were only girls on these things. Law of large numbers suggests you could be successful.
The last stop was the Roaring Billy Falls which had a very nice forest walk but not quite as impressive a final product. I think we’ve been a bit spoiled and need some rebalancing.
We opted to stay in a hostel as it was pretty cheap for the bed and given we expected to be walking a lot and it to be colder, we didn’t fancy any more of the tent. It turned out to be a great decision - the place was incredibly sociable, comfortable and we were fed free vegetable soup every evening. Very happy with the place.
We were pretty tired so bar talking to our roommates for that evening for a bit before they went to a bar, which naturally we weren’t interested in, we did little but relax and plan for the next day. Luke realised Mt Fox was going to be a harder route and would need to summit before 11am to avoid the clouds so it was an early start for us both.
We were up at 7am and out of the door by 7.30am. The Fox Glacier was a half hour drive away and Luke wanted to be walking just after 8am as it was quite a demanding route and was on the clock for the good weather. We were held up for a while by the Allied petrol being closed until 8am and the pay as you go not working but fortunately they opened early to accommodate us.
Luke was off by 8.45am and then Nicola drove over to do some of the lower fox glacier walks.
Nicola headed off to a glacier viewpoint and then onto The Valley glacier hike. Both of which didn't give amazing glacier views but provided an enjoyable walk in the forest. There were a few moraines and signs about how much the glacier had retreated (a good few kilometres) over the last 400 year!
From there she headed to Lake Matheson cafe and spent the afternoon relaxing with an awesome pickled grape, halloumi and pumpkin salad!
Luke story time:
The Mt Fox summit track was a pretty technical route (considered ‘expert’ by the DOC). Initially the fear was that climbing over 1,100m in 3.4km was going to be tough but that element of it was pretty easy as I could not really go any faster than I did do. Nor was the scrambling up tree roots and rocks particularly tricky.
It was trying to find some of the god dam orange markers that slowed me down.
Initially I was flying and ended up catching a french couple who had set off about 20 minutes before I did (as I ate my breakfast in the car). It reached a point shortly after I have overtaken them that I lost the orange markers and ended up relying on them to correct me. A little embaressing.
Fast forward to about half way through the forest climbing (it was literal climbing in a lot of places - great fun) and I got completely lost. I ended up going up what looked like logical routes to fall and slip on a combination of soft mud and fearn and be completely perplexed about where the AllTraills line was guiding me.
So after about 20 minutes of me flapping around the French couple reappeared. This time however they were just as lost as I was so we all spent about 5 minutes trying to find the marker. I thought it would be a great idea to use a fallen tree as a vantage point and platform to find the marker to then fall straight through. Fortunately I only twinged my ankle, had a slightly bruised left pinkie and a shattered ego as the French girl gasped as I fell through what I can only imagine has brought them a lot of laughs post walk.
From this fall however I did rediscover the marker and I effectively ran away after we all started again on the correct path.
The rest of the forest climbing would have been quite fun had I not been a bit concerned about my ankle which did put a downer on the walk. It was a little tender but caused me very little problem going uphill. Going down however I knew it would start flaring up but I figured fuck it and carried on anyways.
Based on the maps, the Mt Fox summit stood at 1,021m which was only just out of the dense forest, replaced with long overgrown grassland and shrubs at this altitude. It wasn’t much to look at but the route continued round.
After working so hard to get to this point and when finally getting high enough to see the Fox Glacier ahead a proper wow moment kicked in. I, by myself, full on shouted ‘o shit’ when hitting this point. The view was incredible.
I continued along the track to the highest Mt Fox summit at 1,345m, sat and had some food and took some selfies.
The end of the route actually continued a bit back away from the glacier so for completeness sack I wondered back that way and was greeted with a great view of Mt Cook from the side of the mountain we wouldn’t have seen. Lovely stuff.
When the clouds started rolling in and fearing my ankle seizing up I started descending. I was pretty fortunate that I was still quick enough to make it up despite my cock ups.
With the view along the ridgeline the French couple had stopped as it gave a better view of the whole glacier. This is also where I met Hannah, a lone German traveller who started talking to me as I came down and then wanted to descend together to which I had absolutely no problem with.
So after a few hours walking, chatting (bit one way and predominantly about hiking) and me consistently trying to take us the wrong way we emerged from the route, meeting Nicola at the car park. We all had a chat and then parted ways. My ankle did start hurting a fair amount more towards the end but thankfully was still walkable.
Strava and AllTrails stats:
6.8km
1,116m gain
Summit = 1,345m
Moving time = 4hr 26min
Elapsed time = 5hr 27min
Luke story over.
Nicola of course then proceeded to make jokes that Luke had found a new girlfriend up a mountain. Of course.
Needing a bit of downtime after the hike, we went back to the cafe at Lake Matheson Nicola had been chilling at given her great experience there. Luke then jumped on the food hype with a much needed venison sausage roll and coffee. Would recommend.
Once finished we took off back to the hostel and then spent the rest of our afternoon and evening relaxing and talking to various people.
Luke was getting the hang of using the copious amounts of weather apps available to him in order to make informed decisions about what walks would be best. He had called it very right the day before, of which he is very happy about, and had made a similar bold call to not attempt the Franz Josef Glacier hike today but leave until check out day as the weather was expected to improve.
3 out of 3 correct for this leg of the trip. Franz had some pretty low lying cloud all day and this did indeed dissapate to give perfect clear skies the next morning.
With this in mind it meant we had little planned and could lie in for once. We both slept so so well. It would take some time before our stint of ‘luxury’ accomdation (basically non-tent) would start repairing months of tearing Nicola’s stamina down but this certainly was a goodun.
We spent the morning chilling, eating and then deciding finally we should probably do something other than just sit in the hostel. To be fair to Nicola she did venture out for a walk around Franz Josef but was back in 15 minutes as the place is tiny.
We drove out to the Okarito Lagoon which was a short drive away, minus one section of traffic due to a collapsed road that had been swallowed by its river neighbour. We had to wait a little while as workmen dumped a shed load of mahousive boulders into the collapsed section before moving on.
We completed the Okarito Trig walk which took us to a vantage point that had views and information boards about the Okarito, 3 mile and 5 mile lagoons nearby. Turned out to be more involved a hike than we wanted in the sunshine that had completely evaded Franz but it was worth it.
We had a short drive and walk over Okarito beach but it wasn’t particularly anything special and then went back to the hostel.
Similarly to the prior night we ate, chilled and socialised. Hostels are infinetely more social than campsites thats for sure. The hostel did try to get people to go to a local bar a 2 minute walk away by having the standard Hummer Limo gimic take people down the road. Of course the only people that appeared to sign up for this were the 5 British lads who were already 2 crates of beer deep - absolutely noone else was drinking to excess. Got to give them credit but NZ doesn’t seem like the place people come to to just party their experience away (unless in bigger cities).
We had packed the car up and were in bed fairly early in order to start out glacier walk the next day at 8am.
For only the second time in 3 months we were going to use Chopper to help transport others than just our selfish selves. In our room was a lovely Dutch girl Aemka who was planning to walk the Alex Knob track at a similar time to us with Lulu. So Luke offered them a lift in the morning rather than them hitch hiking.
It was a little bit of a logisitcal diffiulty given we could only drive 3 people with the car packed, so Luke dropped the girls off at the start of the track and then went back for Nicola.
Nicola wasn’t feeling 100% in the morning so she decided to do a load of lower glacier walks rather than the Alex Knob track. We both walked up to Lake Wombat before we parted ways.
Nicola story time:
I hiked back down from lake wombat and continued on to the glacier viewpoint, which was very busy with coachloads of tourists so continued my hike in a nice loop of about 10km through the Forest before heading off to Franz Joseph for a cafe and research, a nice easy day for me!
Luke story time:
Knowing Aemka and Lulu had a half hour head start meant I had something to aim for. I honestly thought I would catch them quicker but they were going a lot faster than they had the day before so ended up doing this about 2hrs into the walk. The path however was super easy with very little to think about for most of the walk.
It was a similar forested route to Fox, ending the last part to the summit with grasslands and then the full Franz Josef glacier view at the end. There were two lower views of the glacier so if not wanting to summit these are a lot easier to get to.
My opinion is that the glacier is quite a lot less impressive than others. It does however look like an angry Rudolph which made me laugh. The glacier has retreated so much since 2000 and do not see it lasting much longer at all.
At the summit we also had an inquisitive kea spend some time squawking and showing off. Not quite as impressive as the water drinking kea at Getrude but still pretty lucky to see one.
Once we had eaten a bit and laughed at Lulu and her terrible plastic cheese sandwiches we began descending. This took a fair bit longer than I anticipated (pretty good at dictating my own pace - not so great others) and Nicola was waiting in the car for a bit longer but she was chill. It was really nice walking with them and it was good crack the whole time.
In true stellar boyfriend form, I kicked Nicola out of the car, dropped the girls back at the hostel and then returned to pick my actual girlfriend up. In which time she was being mauled by sandflies for 15 minutes. Hiking up two mountains with 3 different girls - safe to say Nicola didn’t let this slide without humour.
Strava and AllTrails stats:
15.3km
1,100m gain
Summit = 1,303m
Moving time = 4hr 31min
Elapsed time = 5hr 35min
At this point, I am not getting any muscle fatigue during or after these hikes and finding it all pretty easy. Amazing what 5 months off work and walking in South Island pretty much non-stop for 2 months will do. This piece is basically to tell myself to not revert back to the hefalump I was when stuck in a working rut.
Luke story over.
So concluded the end of the large hiking in the South Island of NZ. Absolutely epic doesn’t even do it justice.
After a quick change in T-shirt, Luke then drove us to Hokitika. Manz legs are dench.
Once in Hokitika we checked into our hotel and didn’t leave the room except to microwave some leftovers. The two comfortable single beds were greatly appreciated.
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