Apparently basically all the guides hit themselves with the axe at some point (when they use the axe they basically swing as hard as they can at the ice right below their feet, so it''s easy to see how they could miss and spike themselves). Our guide told us managed to spike himself in the shin a couple weeks ago, right to the bone. However, the guides have a toughness code (if he'd been medivac'd out he never would have heard the end of it), so he cleaned out the wound with a fork (the non-sharp end), and hobbled the entire way down. Crazy!
At first the snow we were on was dirty, but after an hour or so we got to some gorgeous ice formations. It was pretty awesome to hike through narrow crevasses, crawl through caves, etc. Oh, and they gave us ice axes! Awesome. I think I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves, so without further ado, here they are:
Rainbow! I wanted to skip the hike and dig for Leprechaun gold, but I got overruled.
hikers traversing the glacier
one of the many gorgeous ice formations on the glacier
hanging out in an ice crevasse
one of the things that makes the Franz Josef glacier rare is that it's right next to a rain forest. Makes a really beautiful contrast
ok, that's enough hiking on ice - time for some hardcore double-axe ice climbing!
this glacier is very photogenic
hanging out in the ice cave. I keep on wanting to say "chilling", but I already used up that pun
ice chunks along the river. Apparently a huge chunk of the glacier fell off the night before and blocked up the river. And then the pressure built up until it broke through and spread ice all along the river bank - look how high it was compared to where the water is now - wish I'd seen that!
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