The free version
You do not have to fly. You cannot, however, walk onto the ice: the terminal face collapsed in 2012, foot access was closed, and the glacier has retreated further since. What is left is a valley walk to a viewpoint, three or four short tracks with genuinely good views, and a hot pool at the end of the day. This page is an honest account of Franz Josef Glacier without a helicopter — what you see, what it costs, and where the limit is.
Quick answer
The short answer. The Franz Josef Glacier Valley Walk is free, takes about ninety minutes return from the car park, and ends at a roped viewpoint roughly a kilometre short of the ice. It is a good walk and a real view. It is not the glacier, and no amount of walking gets you onto it — the only way onto the ice is to fly.
What changed in 2012
The walk is not a cheaper way of doing the same thing. It is a different thing, and it is free.
For more than a century, guided parties walked onto Franz Josef Glacier from the valley floor. Photographs from the 1980s show queues of people in the ice at the bottom of the icefall. That is over.
In 2012 the terminal face collapsed, shedding something like seventy metres of ice off the front and opening a hole where the access route ran. Foot access to the ice was closed and it has not reopened. The glacier has kept retreating since, and the terminal face is now well up the valley from where it stood then.
The consequence is worth stating flatly, because a lot of people arrive with the older picture in their heads: there is no budget version of standing on Franz Josef Glacier. The valley walk is a walk to a viewpoint. Everything else — the scenic flights on this site, and the guided heli-hikes — begins with a helicopter, because there is no other way in.
The free list
All of these are free or nearly so, and all of them are better in the first two hours of the day.
Three kilometres each way up the riverbed from the car park, mostly flat, on gravel and rock. It ends at a roped viewpoint with the terminal face about a kilometre further on. Ninety minutes return at a normal pace, and the valley walls on either side are the real reward.
Twenty minutes return from the same car park, and the best elevated view you can get for nothing. It puts you high enough to read the shape of the valley rather than standing in the bottom of it.
A short detour off the valley track to a small kettle pool that reflects the mountains on a still morning. Twenty minutes, and it is the photograph most people come back with.
Half an hour down the road and a twenty-minute walk. On a windless morning it gives you Aoraki Mount Cook reflected in black water. Nothing at Franz Josef itself matches it.
In the village, and the correct answer to a wet afternoon. Hot pools in rainforest with rain coming down through the canopy is a better experience than it sounds on paper.
Stand on the gravel and look at how wide the channel is compared with the river in it. That discrepancy is what the glacier used to be, and it is the most eloquent free thing in the valley.
Decided you do want to get onto the ice after all? The cheapest flight that lands is $213.
What a flight costs→The honest comparison
What the walk gives you: scale. Standing in the bottom of that valley with walls going up on both sides, you understand the size of the thing that carved it in a way an aerial photograph cannot deliver. It is free, it takes ninety minutes, and on a clearing morning with cloud tearing off the icefall it is genuinely beautiful.
What it does not give you: the ice. From the viewpoint the terminal face is about a kilometre away and a long way up. You are looking at a grey-white wall at the head of a valley. You cannot see the icefall properly, you cannot see the névé at all, and you certainly cannot see the crevasses.
The two are not substitutes. If you have a day and no budget, do the walk and do not feel short-changed. If the glacier is the reason you drove five hours to get here, the walk will not answer that and the twenty-minute flight will.
Book direct
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Common questions
No. The terminal face collapsed in 2012, foot access to the ice was closed, and the glacier has retreated further since. The valley walk ends at a roped viewpoint about a kilometre short of the ice.
To a roped viewpoint roughly a kilometre from the present terminal face, about three kilometres up the valley from the car park. The walk is free and takes around ninety minutes return.
Yes, on its own terms. It gives you the scale of the valley and the walls that the glacier carved, it costs nothing, and it is at its best early in the morning before the coaches arrive. It does not show you the ice properly.
No. Guided walking on the glacier ended when foot access closed after the 2012 collapse. Guided time on the ice now begins with a helicopter in every case.
The Glacier Hot Pools in the village, which are better in rain than in sunshine. Lake Matheson near Fox Glacier is worth the drive if the wind drops. The valley walk itself is perfectly walkable in rain with the right jacket.
The twenty-minute helicopter flight with a snow landing at $213. There is no cheaper route, and no route on foot at any price.
Go deeper
Twelve helicopter flights out of one village, from twenty minutes to ninety.
PricesTwelve flights priced per person and per minute, and where the money actually goes.
VerdictTwelve flights ranked for one decision, with a straight answer at the end.
LandingsWhich flights actually put the machine down, and what the difference is.
LengthThe only real variable, and how much country each length buys you.
Which oneTwo glaciers, twenty-five minutes apart, and the flights that show you both.
