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January 2025 (Part 10)

New Zealand Trip - Day Nine: Franz Josef

Adventures By Disney - Day Eight: Franz and Family

As a group, we headed up into Westland Tai Poutini National Park.  There we met a guide for a short (and thankfully mostly flat) walk along the Waiho River to an overlook site viewing the Franz Josef Glacier high on the mountainside.  Our guide took us off the main trail on a path marked for guides only where she talked about the geology and plants of the rainforest in a valley under the glacier not too long ago.

The overlook was as close to the glacier we could get  without a strenuous hike or a helicopter.  There were several helicopters already flying up the valley to the glacier.  A couple families in our group had booked helicopter tours.  we later learned the tours were unable to fly most days, so they (and we) were very lucky and blessed with a beautiful day.

Some small waterfalls along the southern side fed by the snow (and apparently a small lake) high above.

We headed back downriver a bit to an area where we could walk out onto the riverbed.

There was a really cool rock outcrop on the downriver side of where we were.

When we got back to the parking lot, we separated from the group.  The group was headed back to town for lunch then would have free time in the afternoon.  We wanted to go for a hike, so were planning to leave from the parking lot to hike Robert's Point Track to an overlook of the glacier on the left side of the valley.  We had taken advantage of the breakfast buffet to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, while also grabbing some fruit and a couple granola bars for the trip.  The trail began easily enough, a paved route down and across the valley passing a small and picturesque lake.

The path led to a small suspension bridge over the river, with supports underneath to prevent it from swaying too much.  The path would lead uphill from there, and this quickly became "the hike" also known as a slog, forced march, and grueling adventure.  Loved the signs again for the maximum people on a bridge at once.

Interesting view from mid-span.

We soon passed over several other suspension bridges and up a lot of interesting rocky sections. 

A pretty fantail bird on the trail.

Here is an amazingly long suspension bridge over a gorge.  I think this was the fourth bridge at this point.  Glad to see they had strung several guide wires from the sides to prevent it swaying too much.

We were making slow progress and eventually stopped for lunch in this streambed running through a rockfall.

The trail continued to get steeper with the path leading over rock faces and requiring us to step from rock to rock in most areas.  Large steps up each time, and more worrying about what they'd be like going down.

There were several via ferrata-type sections with scaffolds and walkways supported by iron bars set into steep rock faces.  Once we reached Hende's Hut, there was a really long section leading down the cliff face.

A couple openings gave us a view back to the riverbed.  We could even see the overlook we were at earlier, and the large rock outcrop just downriver of it.

Yeah!  We finally made it to Robert's Trail Overlook.  Rather tired at this point, well except for Andy.  It had taken about five hours of uphill to get here. which was supposed to be the roundtrip time ... uggh.

Time to head back down.  None of our knees were happy, as it was a lot of big steps down going from rock to rock.  Nancy was glad we had brought tracking poles, but with a torn meniscus and a brace, it was a bit too much and her knee was pretty stiff and swollen by the end.

When we finally made it back down to the parking lot, there was no bus waiting for us and no service to try to call a taxi.   So, no choice by to walk out back to town.  In total, I think it took us almost nine-hours from when we started until we were back in town.

Grateful for our guides who had made arrangements for dinner for us.  As we hadn't had our lunch, they arrange for the  restaurant to hold our meals for us.  We headed straight there for what was a wonderful meal.  As we were wiped by then, if we hadn't had a plan, we likely would have gone to our room first to clean up; not sure we would have made it back out.