Franz Josef Glacier Day and surprise! Death Hike

The next morning we set out to see all the Franz Josef Glacier had to offer. We could pay booko bucks for a guided hike on the glacier itself, or hike around it and take tourist photos. We decided to hike around it. John and I decided on a five hour hike in order to get to what was supposed to be a great viewpoint and cross “fun” swing bridges!

Here is a pic along the way...ITS PETE"S POND!!



Well, as it turns out, we firstly got a little lost. Right before we crossed the first bridge, another tourist informed us that the hike ahead was closed. We crossed the bridge, found a river, which had another sign on the other side “DANGER: do not attempt to cross the river.” We thought it looked like more of a creek , but we turned back and thought the path was definitely closed. We decided to take another turn to a different hike, which lead to a stupid highway. Great. BTW we have not seen the glacier at all yet, we started to think it was like, a big fat joke on all tourists.



So then we went all the way back, and spoke to someone working at the park’s parking lot, and he informed us the trail we wanted was open, it was well marked, great, blah blah. So we returned. We have now spent 1 ½ going nowhere. Well, we got back to the river creek and crossed it. No problem. Now we continued for a while, saw another sign that indicated we were on the correct path. Then we came to another sign, “DANGER: only experienced hikers and guides past this area. Steep cliffs, narrow pathways, slippery surfaces, demons below, most likely you are in Mordor, etc.” But we thought back to the guy at the parking lot, and his big fat grin on his stupid face as he told us to march down this fiery road, and we continued. 10 minutes later, I had a mini-anxiety attack (not really) as we came to this spot and were sort of skimming some cliffs. John will say we weren’t really – and truly the path was wide enough and stable enough that we were fine.



So after that we continued. We then encountered other scary things, one where we scrambled up some dirt slopes that were close to the rivers’ edge, and the final one – where I decided I couldn’t continue. This was due to several factors, the most important being that it was raining, and the rocks on the path were getting slippery, two: we were a little fatigued, it was a pretty tough hike, and three the last part involved scaling down some more dirt then using footholds in the side of this one nearly vertical rock and then scaling up a dirt slope on the other side to make your way back onto the road to death, where hopefully you would cross fun swing bridges and see great views! Well, John will tell you that it wasn’t that bad, and perhaps for some it wouldn’t be, but I’m not much of a risk taker, and I can also say that John was literally clutching the side of the hill to get around the final part of the path – which I refused to do. Also, after that area we could see on the other side the red bull! We didn’t want him to follow behind us and cover our footprints!



Or here is the actual end of the line:



Anyways, here is a pic on our way back.



The funny thing is – we still didn’t see a glacier. So we went back to the parking lot and took the flat way touristed hike into the glacier’s “terminal face” (fancy term for “hiking straight towards the glacier on the ground level.”)





Please keep in mind I do exaggerate to make things entertaining, and I’m a fraidy cat.

On the way back, nature was laughing at us again, as the rain came pouring down. We ran the last half mile to the car, and literally, not an inch of either of our bodies were dry.



We then got in the car – all silly, grinning, enjoying the ADVENTURE! of it all, when as we were driving…thump, thump, thump…..flat tire. Dang it! John got out his super manly skills and I made sure cars could see him as he changed our tire to a tiny little joke of a support. We drove to the mechanic, but he was closed.



That night we watched “RANDSOM” with Mel Gibson. Pretty good flick.