This photo was taken at Fox Glacier, in New Zealand. This is my first time to actually step and be on a glacier. The Fox Glacier (“Te Moeka o Tuawe” in Māori) is a 13 km long glacier located in Westland National Park on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island.
I looked at what a glacier is and found this interesting info; glaciers are made up of fallen snow that, over many years, compresses into large, thickened ice masses. Glaciers form when snow remains in one location long enough to compress and transform into ice. Fox Glacier was named in 1872 after a visit by the Prime Minister of New Zealand at that time, Sir William Fox.
 

 
What makes glaciers unique is their ability to move. Due to sheer mass, glaciers flow like very slow rivers. Although retreating throughout most of the last 100 years due to melting at the glacier mouth, Fox Glacier was advancing from 1985 to 2009, and has been retreating since then.
 

 
Accessible by a 20 minute helicopter ride from the town of Fox Glacier, it is one of the few Glaciers in the world which exists in such close proximity to both an ocean and a rainforest.
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Text & Photos by Alicia Davis