When visiting Fox Glacier recently, I decided that I wanted to get a bird’s eye view of the glacier and booked a helicopter scenic flight with Fox and Franz Josef Heliservice. Unfortunately, the weather was not great when we arrived in Franz Josef and our flight was cancelled – yes, shock horror, it does rain on the West Coast every now and again! We decided to head over to Fox Glacier village and see if our chances were better the next day. Luckily we woke up to a beautiful sunny day and headed off to catch our flight.
We had chosen the Fox Glacier and Mount Cook scenic flight package, which included a snow landing and a chance to take photos. I have never been in a helicopter before, so was incredibly excited about going up. We all eagerly boarded the bus at the Fox Glacier Guiding Building to take us out to the helipad. When we got there we were given a short safety briefing before being allowed to board the helicopter.
Once on board, we all put on our headsets, strapped ourselves in and waited for take off. I was surprised at how fast the helicopter went up and it was amazing to watch the scenery fly by as we soared into the air. We flew over Fox Glacier village to the glacier and then flew directly above it, heading up into the mountains.
The glacier was unbelievably beautiful – lots of ice sculptures and crevices that were gleaming a beautiful blue colour in the sunshine after the downpour of the previous night. I spotted some hikers on the glacier and for a moment wished I had taken the chance to go on it too (although I’m not much of a hill climber so that thought didn’t last long!).
Once we reached the top of the Glacier, we flew around Mount Cook and Mount Tasman before landing in the snow at the top of the Fox glacier to take photos with Mount Tasman in the background. It was fantastic and I loved every minute of being up on the mountain in the snow. It was hard to believe that literally less than 10 minutes before I had been standing on solid ground in Fox Glacier Village.
The weather was beautiful at the top – as we were above the clouds, the sun was shining and the sky a beautiful blue colour. We took lots of photos whilst up there and enjoyed running around in the snow – I was tempted to make a snow angel but decided against it as didn’t want to be wet on the heli flight down and thought I might look slightly insane rolling around in the snow!
We had about five minutes at the top of the mountain before we got strapped back in to the helicopter for the return flight. Again, we flew down over Fox Glacier – and even did a rather quick spiral turn around a waterfall which made my stomach lurch somewhat. The clouds had come in whilst we had been on the flight and as we flew through them it was amazing to be surrounded by all the mist before emerging to once again see the glacier and Fox Glacier Village below.
Landing back in Fox Glacier Village safe and sound, we discovered that it had started to rain again in the village. We were glad we had gone up when we did as flights were likely to be cancelled again shortly after if the weather didn’t clear.
Check out the options on www.scenic-flights.co.nz
