From fall into winter
Fall has arrived. I don’t know how I missed it. We’ve definitely had some fall weather, but the last week was a little reminder os summer, with temperatures into the twenties. Today was the end of that. The clouds had moved in, although the rain waited until later in the…
Icy colours on a hot summer day.
It felt like the first day of summer. Sure, it was the end of July, but until now it had been more like fall. Just when we started to give up on it, the sun magically appeared and people started to post photos of it on Facebook, captioning ‘What is…
Franz up close
My initial meeting with Franz was as a little human looking up at the awesomeness of the glacier from a viewpoint in the glacier valley. That same day I had a booked a glacier explorer, so in the afternoon I hauled my ass into a suit and then a helicopter.…
Meeting Franz for the first time
Ever since I saw the glacier at the end of the Hooker Valley track in Mt Cook, I’ve been meaning to go to Franz Joseph. I wanted to walk on a glacier and see the thing up close. It took me a while, but in my last trip through New…
Wonderful walks in the Aoraki/Mt Cook national park
Mt. Cook village is a good base to explore the Aoraki/Mt. Cook national park. Accommodation is generally expensive, but the local YHA has normal prices and is a very relaxed place to stay. In the warmer months you can also use the excellent campsite close to the village, where some of…