Rush hour on the glacier

In this part of the world there are five metres of rain a year, it rains 200 days of the year and is cloudy most of the rest. But my life is charmed. When I went onto Fox Glacier for a seven-hour guided walk it was sparkling in brilliant sunshine and the sky was deep blue.

Our access was a walk up the valley through rainforest until we could see the head of the glacier. Once we were close enough we attached crampons to our boots and headed onto the ice - vast and beautiful. We tramped over the moraine, scaled steps cut by our guide into narrow turquoise crevasses and saw arches, small ice caves, giant ice pinnacles, walls of ice textured like marble, and 'moulins' - holes made by meltwater. Much of the time we could see only our group of 12, but every now and then it was clear just how busy the glacier was...

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