Monday, July 8, 2013

World Tour Update #17

Back from hiking the glacier. It was a very civilized way to do things. We had a leisurely breakfast, then at 11:00 a.m. we took a helicopter about halfway up. It was the first time I'd been in a chopper since my Army days - memories...

Anyway, our good luck streak with the weather continued. It snowed last night, but today dawned clear and sunny. There was about 6 inches of fresh snow on the glacier. That meant we didn't have to use crampons, but could just wear our boots. Much more comfortable. It also meant that we could bump-slide (sit on our rear ends and bump/slide down the steeper parts) on the way down, which made my knee very happy.

Amazing views, incredible scenery, great weather, wonderful companions ... the only drawback is that the pictures I took don't come close to capturing the scope and majesty of the surroundings. Here's one that gives a little bit of an example of what we experienced. That bluish-white ice and snow on the left is the glacier, with the mountain ridges surrounding it in the center and on the right.


We're staying here tonight. We have a free day tomorrow, stay here again tomorrow night, then a travel day back to civilization (Christchurch, NZ), one final night there, and then on the plane for the long, long, loonnngggg flight back home.

After that will be a period of several days when we ask ourselves why we ever left Australia and New Zealand...

3 comments:

Old NFO said...

Great to hear that worked out for y'all... :-)

Toejam said...

Just think, if you settled in Australia we'd have to refer to you as CAT instead of CTT.

CenTexTim said...

NFO - gracis.

Toejam - There's nothing in the center of Australia except a whole lot of emptiness. If I settled in Australia it's be somewhere along the southern coast, so I'd be SAT instead of CAT.