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It was an early start the next day, needing to layer up and prepare our packed lunches for the trek ahead. We met at the the trek centre at 8:15am, checked in, signed our release forms and were given our over-trousers, jackets, hat, gloves, boots, socks and crampons, which we quickly (Although somewhat laboriously) put on and climbed on into the bus that would take us to the glacier. It was a short and scenic drive to the glacier and a 10 minute walk through a small patch of forest would take us to the start of the rocks and streams at the foot of the glacier (and make for some awesome photos). It was at this point that the guide would ask us how long we thought it might take to walk to the glacier from where we stood - 10 minutes was the average answer, whilst the actual answer is 45 - the sheer scale of the glacier means that you have absolutely no sense of distance or scale, it was really quite ridiculous - and laughing at our complete idiocy began the walk over pebbles, rocks, boulders and streams to the foot of the glacier.
Now the glacier for those who don't know, and those who weren't quite paying attention to the above, is massive. Beginning from a height of 2700m above sea level (fed by a 20km snowfield) descending through Westfield National Park rainforest to 240m above sea level in as little as 11km makes it the steepest commercially climbable glacier in the world. It currently terminates 19km from the Tasman Sea and, whilst having retreated between the 1940s and 80s, since 1984 has been in a stage of growth and times experiencing an advance as much as 70cm in a single day. What did this mean for Lucy and I? It meant that it was very, very cool (figuratively and literally) and very, very pretty.
At the foot of the glacier we stopped to put on our crampons, which was harder than it would seem, and split into 2 groups - those who were to do the glacier faster than the other who were to do it at a more leisurely pace. We opted for the leisurely pace, as the other group would be seeing no more of the glacier and surely just doing a lot more waiting about, and our slower walk would allow us to take lots of photos. Plus we didn't know how hard the walk was gonna be yet.
We began scaling the glacier, up the previously "carved" (hacked away) "steps" and using the rope holds until we were higher up the glacier and on slightly less vertical ground. The weather was gorgeous, bright and sunny and despite being on a glacier the walk itself was heating us up a bit, a good chunk of the group took to shedding layers as we climbed, turns out we were really lucky as our guide told us it rains (in some fashion) 250 days of the year on the glacier. It is in fact this rain that formed all the holes and caves in the glacier we could see as the rain fell, formed puddles, which melted the ice, formed deep plugs of rain water, and would form the massive cracks and holes.
Half way up the glacier we were given ice picks for gaining a hold and using as a walking stick. For the most part it was a fun accessory. The Australian boy (19) who had never before seen snow and by his own admission had previously only gotten as close to snow as his freezer began hacking away left and right. It was very cute. Occasionally it was required to help you get down steep steps.
There was a fun little cave that you slid down into and shuffled through for about 6 or 7 foot, it was fun, I would have happily done that again and the slide made good photos. We then came to a massive hole in the ice (and by massive I mean like 8m across) which had a set of stairs being built into them by a woman who had the worst sunglasses tan line I have ever seen in my life. She was proper white under her sunglasses and her face pretty brown otherwise I had to wonder it it was just her face that was tanned since a large proportion of her was hidden by fleece. I was tempted to take a photo of her, but by the time I had decided to do so she had put her sunglasses back on. More to the point we were climbing a particularly steep set of stairs which required another rope hold and could (potentially) result in some rather nasty accidents (death) if done incorrectly.
No one died and from the other side of the steps were some of the best photo taking opportunities, where the ice was bright blue, dark black or brilliant white with tight chasms for taking your photos in. From here it was a gentle descent back to the valley floor, dropping our ice picks off on the way down and rejoining the steep vertical path down to the ground,with only a few slips here and there (and only one particularly dramatic and amusing one that was more surprisingly not me). We rejoined the other group and removed our crampons for the walk back to the bus across the rocks, which I did to the soothing sounds of Lady Gaga. At the bus, however, we had to wait some ridiculous period of time for 2 woman who were taking ages to walk back and had apparently turned around half way up, not thinking they would manage to go any further (nonsense). We evilled them when they made it to the bus 15 minutes later).
Back at the hostel we made friends with the new arrivals to the room - James, Chris and a kiwi called Steve - and made plans to go to the Rainforest Cafe Bar (as this is the hostel the kiwi experience stays at). The boys entered a speed pool competition, whilst me and Lucy cheered from the sides. Chris came second and won 6 RTDs, which we thought sounded like some kind of STD but actually stands for "Ready To Drink" ie alcopops. After much more drinking we moved to a local bar on the other side of town that was the only remaining bar open at 1am (disgraceful!). Lucy and I played some pool here before noticing that Steve was vomitting over the side of the balcony (the bar was on the first floor). Not quite putting 2 and 2 together the other 4 of us were then bought a (very large) shot concoction by the locals. Lucy had hers first and managed to keep it down for maybe a minute before joining Steve and vomitting over the balcony. Chris and James took theirs and went running down the stairs to be sick outside almost immediately, whilst I took mine and managed to keep it down for maybe 5 minutes, shooting it down with some beer, before calmly, but swiftly getting myself to the toilet to expel the shot. Turned out to be chilli sauce, tabasco, sambuca, tequila, absinthe and many other things I'm sure I have forgotten. When I say it was a shot it was perhaps 120ml of s***. Its safe to say that that kicked the night off and from there on in we were utterly f***ed. We returned to the hostel somewhere in the vicinity of 4am, to have serious issues in getting passed the security lock on the outside door of the hostel, giggling all through it, and waking up the girls in our room who had decided not to join us... good times!!
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