Didn’t have time to get very close to Fox Glacier. Took this shot looking through the valley with the glacier in the distance.
I was able to get much closer to the Franz Josef Glacier, but it started raining and the surrounding mountains were exploding with waterfalls.
The glacier was named after Franz Josef I of Austria by Julius von Haast. (Presumably because every other damn thing in New Zealand was already named after Haast himself.) If “Franz” and “Austria” ring a bell it’s because Franz Josef’s great-grandchild was Archduke Franz Ferdinand whose assassination would eventually precipitate the World War I Memorial in Glenorchy. Small world. And the slow glacier of history grinds on.
In cheerier news, the mountains along this glacier were used for the “Beacons of Gondor” sequence in The Return of the King.