Got up early for my days hiking up the Franz Josef glacier. Had to get totally kitted out in hiking gear which was pretty funny. Had waterproof over trousers, a rain jacket, mittens, wooly hat, massive and heavy walking boots and crampons. WIth it all on we looked pretty silly. Murray, Liza and James were also doing it. We got the bus to the glacier and walked through some rainforest to get to the valley floor. When we came out of the forest we still had to walk about 2km to get to the bottom of the glacier, it was really weird tho cause the glacier didnt look that far away, apparently thats because the valley and glacier are massive! Was chatting to James most of the time over there so the time when pretty quick and didnt feel like we were walking that long.

When we got to the bottom of the glacier we put our crampons on. These things are very strange and took some getting used to. Totally made me feel like a proper climber lol! By this time i had already taken off 2 of my layers as i was so hot from walking! So we evenutally headed up the glacier and it was quite strange as even tho we were on the glacier we were walking over stones and you couldnt see the ice at all! Eventually we got past all the stones and were actually walking on ice! Must admit it was pretty amazing, walking on a glacier, especially when i learnt all about them at school! They took us across the glacier, and at some points we had to walk up some pretty steep steps which was quite tricky and made even worse because of the crampons even tho they help u grip! There was one point i couldnt figure out how to do it so the guy just puled me up!! I also nearly squashed poor James when i wobbled going up some steps! He was like i would hav caught u even tho he wouldnt hav had any choice as i would hav fallen on top of him lol!

We went through some pretty narrow cravases where u had to walk sideways with ur bag on 1 shoulder or u wouldnt have got through! Was a bit scary as they were such small spaces but we all maaged to survive! James did ask wot would happen if the glacier moved but apparently they move very slowly, so there was no chance of usgetting squashed in between! However if there was an earthquake we would all die which was lovely to know!!! As we were heading back down it did start raining which sucked as it ment no1 was talking as much and it made the ice slippy! And i must say i hate my ankles for being so weak!! Sometimes when i jumped off a step my ankle would give way which would mke me wobble, which wasnt good.

The walk back to the bus was pretty hellish and it seemed so much further away than it had in the morning! Plus when we got onto the flat bit my shoulders/back really started to ache! All in all we were walking about and climbing for about 6hours, only stopping briefly for lunch, so it was a pretty tough day. So glad i did it tho!

Even tho i was really tired and could hav gone to my bed at like 6pm, i ended up staying up til about 11pm chatting to a German guy from my room and a wee English woman in the kitchen.