End of the ice: New Zealand’s vanishing glaciers Glaciers have drawn people to the west coast for decades. Now the ice is retreating. Is it too late to save them? When Cliff Goodwin first came to Franz Josef he didn’t know what a glacier was. It was 2001, and Goodwin had been travelling down the length of New Zealand from his hometown Taranaki, doing odd jobs: fruit picking, housekeeping. “I worked until I had $1,000, then I travelled until I had $100,” he says. Goodwin had been intending to top up his bank account, then go. But soon after arriving in Franz Josef – on the West Coast of the South Island, at the foot of the Southern Alps – he went to see the town’s biggest draw for himself.