The walk from the car park to the terminal face is now nearly 4 km and many visitors are considering visiting the larger glacier at Fox township instead. Tourists had been flown on to the ice by helicopter, but now even this is in jeopardy. Scientists using seismometers detected "ice quakes" - the ground shaking from an ice collapse - as a huge cavity formed beneath the glacier, eventually causing its surface to sink into it. Then, in 2012, a huge hole opened up and guided walks were stopped.
The retreat began in 2008, and in 2011 the ice thinned by about 70 m behind the glacier terminal. But in the following five years it melted almost 820 m. Then, between 19, this glacier advanced almost 1.5 km after heavy snowfalls. Between 1893 and the end of its last big retreat 90 years later, in 1983, Franz Josef Glacier receded about 3 km. Although the South Island's steep, low altitude glaciers have always been dramatic in their advances and retreats, the rapidity of the present retreat is remarkable in geological time scales. The glacier retreated 800 m in five years, prompting suggestions of a road up the valley as the ice disappears from view.
The recent spectacular ice retreat at the Franz Josef Glacier has surprised even the experts and shocked local businesspeople who thought the impressive ice river would be a reliable source of income for years to come. Ice climbers on Franz Josef Glacier in 2006įranz Josef is a glacial area at the foot of the western slopes of Mount Cook, in the middle of the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand.
Not to be confused with Franz Josef Land in the Arctic.
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