Franz Josef Glacier is one of the few glaciers on Earth that slides from high alpine snow almost to the edge of a temperate rainforest. Māori know it as Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere, the tears of Hine Hukatere, and there is a story behind that name. The ice drops down a short, steep valley on the western flank of the Southern Alps. It is fed by some of the heaviest snowfall of any glacier in the world, up to fifteen metres a year on the peaks above. That weight, forced down a steep bed, makes it one of the fastest-moving valley glaciers anywhere. The geologist Julius von Haast named it in 1865 for Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. Today it lies inside Te Wāhipounamu, a UNESCO World Heritage Area that protects nearly a tenth of New Zealand.
For more than a century, visitors could walk up the valley and step straight onto the ice. That has changed. After a rare stretch of advance late last century, the glacier has retreated sharply, and a terminal collapse in 2012 closed the walk-up route for good. The only way onto the ice now is a helicopter heli-hike, which sets you down among blue-walled crevasses, ice caves, and seracs on the upper glacier. From the ground, a free track still winds through rainforest and past waterfalls to a viewpoint of the terminal face, though the ice sits across the riverbed now, not at your feet. You read the retreat in the bare rock underfoot: a century ago, ice filled the valley where you stand on stone. It is a glacier in visible retreat — easy to reach, yet slipping year by year further up its valley.