Foxy Glacier

It seems everywhere we stay in New Zealand we don't want to leave, but the trip must go on, so on the 1st of December we said goodbye to Greymouth and made our way south to Fox Glacier. Not as popular as Franz Joseph but unlike Franz Fox had other attractions within walking distance. We arrived on the 1st quite late in the day to find a small alpine village and our hostel complete with free hot tub so not a bad place at all. The following day we had booked ourselves in for an ice climb. Instead of just going prancing around the glacier taking pretty pictures (which we did as well) we got the chance to climb all over that bad boy, much more exciting than a stole on ice. When we arrived at the base camp we met the fellow climber an Asian family complete with grandad, so quite how they though he would get on with an ice clime i don't know but that was up too them. From the base the bus took us about half the way to the glacier but eventually it could go no further and we had to walk the last few kilometres to the glacier. Once on the ice we were shown the ropes and then let loose to clime some ice. The first wall wasn't too challenging only a 10 meter face and the one after that was even easier but our guides had a surprise lined up for us. The final wall was about 40meter of hard ice (so getting a grip was a bit tricky) and too make things more interesting the was a slight over hang. On my first attempt after a few falls i came agonisingly close to the top but as i went to pull up my axe lost all its grip and i found myself dangling a good 35meters up completely exhausted and had to accept defeat. But the second time i change the route slightly and made it up with no hitches; well i nearly put my axe though the rope but will ignore that part. After this we called it a day and slowly made our way down off the glacier then back on the bus to the village for a relaxing evening it the hot tub. The following day we walked to lake Matheson. Only 6km from the village we still got there surprisingly fast so took the pace down for a strolled round the lake taking in the stunning views of mount cook in the background. For the keen you can get there for sunrise and use the lake as a mirror in the still of the morning reflecting the mountain range behind, but personally a 4am start was a bit too keen. Once we'd got our fill of lake view we headed back just getting caught in the starts of a storm. But back at the hostel we saw how lucky we were as the storm worsened into a proper down pour. So this would be the perfect chance for a hot tub session right? Wrong, the last person to use it had left the standby temp too low and the cover slightly open so it was a rather disappointing luke-warm tub. But still we'd enjoyed our time in the foxy glacier even if we didn't get the goodbye hot tub session in the rain we wanted.