We arrived in a town called Franz Joseph which is named after the nearby Glacier. We lucked out and caught it on a beautiful clear day. It's a very touristy town offering lots of adventurous activities and various ways of seeing the glacier. We decided to do a long hike up a nearby cliff known as Alex's Knob (no jokes please!). The hike was supposed to be 8 hours long and as we only had 7 hours of daylight left when we set off we decided to do it at a strong pace. It was a steep climb right from the start and we were sweating and hurting within no time at all. We thought we were doing really well when stopping for water and a Canadian guy from Toronto came breezing past us, barely out of breath. He was a nice guy and we chatted with him frequently during the climb. We were rewarded with some amazing views of the glacier at various times but low and behold when we eventually reached the top the clouds rolled over. We waited it out a bit and eventually got some great views. We got great views of Mount Cook and Mount Tasman as well as the glacier. Down hill was much easier going although you really had to concentrate on your footing. We were happy to find that it had only taken us just over 5 hours in total to complete. We were shattered and had huge blisters for our efforts.
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