Are you sitting comfortably?
Then I shall begin. After 6 days in Te Anau it was time to head up the coast to Franz Josef, as I was leaving Te Anau I thought it would be nice to pick up some more hitch hikers for some company on the journey.
And lo and behold just round the corner on the edge of town, Mike was enthusiastically waiting for a lift to Queenstown, he looked like he'd been hiking.
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| Cuthbert. Proud supporter of Trackhopper! |
Mike had ran the entire Routeburn track the day before, the Routeburn track is one of the great walks - a 3 day hike, I should know I've done it, with a big pack and staying in DOC huts and that. But Mike just had a day pack, which didn't even contain any water or food! Just one enormous fleecy jacket and a cell phone and he completed the track in 3.5hrs! That's pretty amazing by itself, but it turns out Mike does this on average 3 times a week in the course of running his car relocation business for people walking the Routeburn, who for some reason have a fear of buses or something, anyway Mike and his team pick up the stranded vehicles and relocate to the other end of the track for when the clients finish the walk. It's a very popular service but sometimes logistics mean he has to run over the track from his centre of operation in Glenorchy to The Divide instead of driving round. I didn't really understand this part, as the conversation moved on to Mike's interesting theories on hydration, which he could probably write a book about and start a new trend, he had enough interesting stories to last all the way to Frankton, where I dropped him off. He bought me an ice cream as thanks and some chocolate bars. The relocator had been relocated!
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| Me |
On I went to the West Coast, and the views and the weather was superb. I've been up the West Coast before but never seen it, this is because the first time I was a passenger and I was asleep. The next time it rained and was generally miserable weather, the time after that it rained in turbo overload mode and washed out a bridge so I had to turn back so didn't see it and wouldn't have seen it anyway for the rain. But look what the rain was hiding:
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| Haast Pass to the West Coast |
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| Look at that gorgeous red car. It really sets of the mountains. |
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| Franz Josef |
And after many hours, and a big French toast with fruit and cream stack later. I arrived in Franz Josef.
I had booked a heli hike, it's the only way you can get onto the glacier at Franz Josef.
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| Fun helicopter ride up to the Glacier |
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| Landing on the Glacier |
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| Crevasses |
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