After the Walk

Peg has an interesting point.  She says:

>How strange: Maybe I should not say this but we were helicoptered right onto the icefall -- rain jackets, poles, talons and all.<

Mm-hmm.  Yes, that would be the "heli-hike option."  For which I was not signed up.  This is the difference between making your own damn plans and letting a travel agent do it.  *You* know what you want.  The agent has no freakin' clue.  Fact is, once the agent screwed up the initial reservation and I no longer ended up with the whole three-day package I'd been aiming for (including the half-day walk), I should have looked at all the options and selected the walk best suited for me, rather than just let her add in what she thought was best.

As it turned out, though, the heli-hike wasn't an option.  After the walk (and telling you all about it), I realized that I hadn't really WANTED to hike on a glacier -- what I'd wanted was to have a helicopter fly me up to the good bits, jump out for about ten minutes, go "hey, I'm on a glacier," take lots of pictures, and leave.  Even though I'd already done the walk, I had the afternoon to kill, so went over to one of the many helicopter places in Franz Josef and see if I could right that wrong and get me some "hey, I'm on a glacier" pictures.

I couldn't.  They had bad weather coming in and weren't flying.  In fact, they'd cancelled all their flights that day.  Turns out the only way to get on that glacier that day was the walk -- so, ultimately, I guess I'm glad I did it the way I did.

(Of course, then I went back to the hotel, ripped off my clothes, soaked in a nice hot bath, examined the scrapes and bruises forming on my knee, and cursed Kris a little more.)