New Zealand - Day 17 - Aoraki (Mount Cook)

First views of Mount Cook

We had debated whether or not to visit Mount Cook for a while. No matter which way you come at it, it’s a good 400km round trip – once you’re in there’s no way out except the way you came, and by all accounts the chance of catching it on a good day and actually being able to see it was fairly slim!

Being NZ’s biggest mountain we wanted to try our luck at seeing it, so we headed out from Wanaka early for the mammoth drive ahead. Fortunately, it seemed the weather was in our favour and we were keeping our fingers crossed that it lasted!

The scenery was fairly standard for the first part of our journey (sheep, sheep, cows and more sheep) but as we got closer to Mount Cook it became rather jaw-droppingly amazing. Aoraki means 'cloud piercer' in Maori and it's an apt name (not to mention rather more poetic than Mt Cook!). The mountain dominated everything around it and looked like an enormous snow cone from a distance.

Woof!

With the weather being so clear you could also see the rest of the mountain range from a fair distance, and the road in takes you alongside a river that is so icy blue it looks like it’s been superimposed! We found out later that it gets it’s colour from ‘glacial flour’ – basically a load of minerals that get collected by water on it’s way down the mountains.

We happened upon ‘Peter’s Lookout’ at the side of the road and stopped to get some photos before continuing on to our campground about 8km from Mount Cook.

Lake Tasman

On arrival, James went to check us in and came back to the van bearing the news that if we wanted to do any walking we had to do it fairly sharpish, as apparently there was a huge storm moving in the following day. We were a bit disappointed as we’d been hoping to do a cruise on Lake Tasman – a huge glacial lake complete with icebergs. Sadly the last cruise had gone for the day and they wouldn’t be running the next morning on account of the weather, but the lady on the desk told us we could still do the easy walk to see it, so it wasn’t all bad. It did seem rather hard to believe in the glorious sunshine the weather was going to take a turn, but we took the advice and drove straight to the mountains to tackle the glacial walk.

I’m not sure when we’re going to learn that when New Zealanders say a walk is ‘fairly easy’ they mean in comparison to actually climbing a mountain naked with one leg…but the track up to the glacier was every so slightly more challenging than anticipated, particularly in a sling! The well-trodden bush path quickly turned into a scramble up steep, loose rocks but eventually we made it in once piece! (Or in my case, at least the same condition I started in…)

View form the top

Once we reached the top we were pretty glad we hadn’t paid the $165 each to take the cruise as from the top you were pretty close to the lake and had the most spectacular views down the valley of all the mountains. There were a couple of other people at the top, but it was eerily quiet up there, it felt like you were at the top of the world, and the scenery was so impressive it looked almost like a movie backdrop.

The icebergs themselves are estimated to be about 500 years old and being the first time we’d ever seen icebergs we were pretty impressed! The lake itself is much younger at about 30 years old, and was formed when huge its of ice sheared of the face of the glacier.

Scenic beer back at the campsite

With the sun nearing the horizon we began the rather treacherous trek back down, which was somewhat trickier than going up! We took the last hour of sunshine as an opportunity to drive around the base of the mountains and gawping at the sheer size of them, before heading back to our campsite.

We picked a spot with some rather magnificent views of the mountains and had a scenic beer or two before calling it a night.