Thursday, January 15, 2009

Take me out (Franz Joseph Glacier) - 30 December 20008 - 2 January 2009

After our great Kayak adventure, we moved on South to the Franz Joseph glacier.

We noticed on the map that there was a place named "Cape Foulwind" and being the mature folks that we are, decided we needed to stop by.

In spite of the wind (and the picture below) the air is actually quite fresh:





Originally we planned to ice climb and whitewater raft while we were in town - Ice climbing on the 31st and rafting on the 1st. The rafting folks wanted us to move to the second, though, because it was supposed to rain on the first.

Instead, it rained on New Year's Eve - all day. Our climbing trip was canceled, so we took the opportunity to grab lunch and check out the entire town. That took about two hours. We ended up having a nice, quiet New Year's Eve in our hotel room.

The 1st was a beautiful day, though, and we got to go ice climbing. I really enjoyed it (more than Jen, certainly) although the loaner boots gave me a blister on my right heel that I've still got two weeks later.

Here are shots of both of us climbing, along with a shot of a tour group climbing the glacier:








On the second, it was raining again.  It rains so much that they have
indoor ice climbing.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

so, I am going to assume that indoor ice climbing doesn't involve real ice, any more so than indoor rock climbing involves real rocks?

chadwick said...

Actually there is real ice. They've got a refrigerated room with a couple of ice walls. Over the course of the day they carry ice in from an ice maker and plaster it over the walls, making different features to climb. It's clever, but clearly a stopgap.