New Zealand - Fox Glacier

And we're back with images from New Zealand!  The last post in this series saw us leaving Franz Josef Glacier and now we're heading for Fox Glacier.  We saw four glaciers while were doing our South Island tour; the other two being at Milford Sound and Glenorchy, but Franz Josef and Fox were the ones we saw 'up close and personal'.

The trail to the foot of Fox Glacier is more strictly set out, with plenty of signs warning against straying from the path and instructing you to keep moving.  There's a good risk of rock fall so it's not a place to camp out for too long!

The photo below shows rock fall on the left.  Fox has much steeper valley walls than Franz Josef, giving you a better feeling of how ice carved a path to the sea.  To get a sense of scale, have a look at the people on the  path at the right side of the photo.

Storms roll in quickly around this part of the country and when they come up like this one is doing, you start to realise why trampers (hikers) run into trouble if they're not properly prepared.

Here's the river coming out of the bottom of Fox, with the same milky glacial water as we saw at Franz Josef.  Yup, those are chunks of ice - and they're not small - that's a huge boulder behind them.

And now we see Fox Glacier itself.  There are two groups of people in this photo; one near the middle of the frame, halfway between the river and the two rock chunks that stick out, and the other about a third of the way down from the top of the glacier.  They're pretty tiny so look hard!

Behind Fox is are more mountains - no snow at this time of year - which are shaded by the fast-moving black storm clouds.  Some rain drops started coming down and we decided it was time to head back to the car.  Even in summer, the temperature drops pretty quickly when the sun goes behind a cloud.

This will be the last of the New Zealand Series posts.  Please visit the Southern Kiwi Photography website for New Zealand photos - check back often to see images as I upload them!