Today I am up to the heli-hike on Franz Josef with The Guiding Company.

The weather is very sunny and the night sky was very clear and crisp. A Top spot for astronomical observations down under on the West Coast of New Zealand!

The helicopter flies us quickly up the glacier and this time our pilot gives us a bit of adrenaline when he passes a huge cliff and go down immediately after: wooha!

We then land on the ice and wear our Gortex jacket, put our crampons and take our axe.

The ice architecture of this area looks very different than the place I landed a few days ago for my heli-hike on the Fox Glacier: there are more vertical formations and accessible crevices! The glacier is also wider and the upper scenery is gorgeous.

It's nice and warm up there and we don't need any more our warm jackets: a tee shirt is enough. After only two minute walk, we arrive at a river carved ice cave. It's about 80cm large and 2 meter high.

The ice is pure and blue: that's beautiful!

The exit is an enlarged crevice: the guides carved steps on each wall and thanks to a rope, it's very easy to get out.

Crevices are formed when the glacier ice speed changes: the upper part is moving slower than the lower part.

We continue our journey and soon we reach a large pool of pure glacier water. I saw on some pictures that some people are courageous enough to swim in it for a few seconds! The pool is covered with crystal shaped ice. These ice crystals only form when the temperature drops very quickly to -10 degree Celsius.
We then reach another interesting ice formation: it's an arch with a large entrance and a narrow exit up. The thing is that you have to lie down and then slide up to the exit like penguin. That's fun and I do it twice to get both pictures from the entrance and exit!

Continuing our hike, we arrive in an area with amazingly vertical eroded blocs of ice and crevices. It's a good time to take 3D pictures of the Franz Josef glacier.

Our guide shows us the way back to the helicopter landing area (a flat 7 by 6 meter rectangle).

While waiting for our helicopter, I can't resist taking some fun pictures in the sun :-)

On our flight back, we can enjoy the beautiful scenery of the Fox Glacier and Tasman Sea.