The version that costs nothing
You do not have to spend five hundred dollars. What you cannot do is 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 free valley walk to a viewpoint, a handful of short tracks with genuinely good views, a lake that reflects the entire Main Divide, and a hot pool for the afternoon it rains. This is an honest account of all of it.
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.
What changed in 2012
The walk is not a cheaper version of the heli hike. It is a different thing, and it costs nothing.
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 roughly seventy metres of ice off the front and opening a hole where the access route ran. Foot access to the ice was closed and has never reopened. The glacier has kept retreating since, and the public valley walk now takes you up the riverbed to a roped viewpoint roughly a kilometre short of the present terminal face.
This is worth stating flatly, because plenty of visitors arrive with the older picture in their heads. There is no cheap guided ice walk any more. There is a heli hike, there is a scenic flight, and there is a view from a distance — and the view from a distance is free.
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. 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.
Ten minutes north of the village. Even without paddling, the still water and the reflection of the range on a calm morning are worth the stop.
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.
Book direct
A guided valley walk, two ways onto the lake, and the one thing that runs in the rain.
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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 a crevasse or a tunnel.
The two are not substitutes. If you have a day and no budget, do the walk and do not feel short-changed — and if you can stretch to $61, the guided version of the same track is better than doing it alone, because someone reads the valley for you.
If the glacier is the reason you drove five hours to get here, neither will answer that, and the heli hike will.
Decided you do want to be on the ice after all?
What a heli hike costs→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 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.
Not onto the ice. Guided walking on the glacier ended when foot access closed after the 2012 collapse. There is a guided walk up the valley to the viewpoint at $61, which is a different and much cheaper thing.
The Glacier Hot Pools in the village, which are better in rain than in sunshine. The quad bike tour at $138 runs in weather that grounds the helicopters. Lake Mapourika is at its best under grey. And the valley walk is perfectly walkable in rain with the right jacket.
The heli hike at $497. The twenty-minute scenic flight at $199 lands on snow and lets you out for ten minutes, which is cheaper but is not walking on the glacier. There is no route on foot at any price.
Go deeper
What it is, what it costs, and why there is no way onto the ice without one.
PricesThree heli hikes priced against the scenic flight, and what the money actually buys.
VerdictThree heli hikes compared on time on the ice, group size and what is included.
Hike or flyThe most common wrong booking in Franz Josef, settled with both sets of numbers.
Hour by hourFrom the boot fitting to the pick-up, in order, with the boring parts left in.
Which oneTwo glaciers, two villages, and which one to put your only clear morning into.
