Today I am going for a scenic helicopter flight up the Glaciers with Fox and Franz Josef Heli-Service.

After two days of rain, the weather is getting better and sunnier. Today is the 9th of April 2005 and there is a partial solar eclipse taking place in New Zealand at sunrise between 6 am and 8 am. I tried to get in the first helicopter so that I could go over the remaining clouds and picture the solar eclipse form above. Being on the West Coast, the sun rises up behind the Southern Alps so I had to go up in the sky! I set my camera shutter speed on a 4000th of a second, ISO 100 and put some sunglasses in front to further reduce the exposure to the strong sun light.

Unfortunately, it seems that at 8.30am, it was a bit late for the eclipse. It was a try!
Now is time to enjoy the helicopter scenic flight which looks sumptuous. This helicopter flight is very different from the heli-hike flight for the simple reason that we stay 30 minutes and are looking for scenery! In a word: it's incredible up there! We first go from Franz Josef to Fox above a 'climax' podocarp forest which is a mature indigenous forest which takes 3000 to 4000 years to grow.

We then go up the Fox Glacier. We pass its terminal face and we have a superb view of the 1000 meter vertical cliff and waterfall on the right side of the U shaped valley.

Our helicopter flies up to a steep crevices area.

We then reach a beautiful area with snow covered smooth ice architectures. This glacier is so beautiful!

We then land on the neve. The neve is the top of the glacier where the snow is following in enormous quantities and where the blue ice is formed. This is a flat area and we can get off the helicopter for 50 meters on the snow.

The weather is excellent, the sky is blue and there is no wind. The panorama from of neve is impressive with views on the surrounding mountains. From left to right we can see: Mt Alack (2759m), Douglas Peak (3077m), Mt Haidinger (3070m), Governor Col (2834 m), Grey Peak (2882m), Pioneer Pass (2759m), Mt Haast (3114m), LENDELFELD Peak (3194 m), Mt Tasman (3491 m), Torres Peak (3160 m) and Mt Du Fresne (2266m). Note that Mt Cook isn't visible form this part of the neve.

After about 5 minutes of visual enjoyment, we depart with the helicopter in the direction of the Albert Glacier up north. We then fly above the Pioneer Ridge and the Pioneer Hut.

We then fly via Newton Pass (2492m) with Mt Halcombe (2659m) on our left and Mt Barnicoat (2800m) on our right. We arrive above the Agassiz Glacier and our helicopter then lands for a few seconds near the Centennial Hut and one mountain climber gets off the helicopter. He will tramp and climb the mountains for a few days.
We then head toward the Franz Josef Glacier flying above the Chamberlain Snowfield, the Mackay Rocks (2222m and 2243m) toward the Geikie snowfield. The scenery is extraordinaire with steep dark crevices and softer white ones.

Below our heli, we can see the Franz Josef Glacier, on the side we can see the valley walls, covered with vegetation, in front of us there is the Waiho rivers and it's neighboring lake Mapourika and in the distance we have a view on the Tasman Sea waves rolling on the long sand stretches of Moonlight Beach, Sandfly Beach, Waiho Beach, Five Mile Beach and Three Mile Beach!

That was an incredible flight!