Aoraki/Mt. Cook

The mountain is known officially by its Maori name, Aoraki. The national park surrounding it covers 270 square miles and contains 19 peaks higher than 3,000 meters (9842 ft). Mt. Cook is the tallest mountain in New Zealand at 12,318 ft.

But I’m getting slightly ahead of myself…

You may remember from the last post, the beautiful Lake Tekapo -

Well, after that one, we got to drive by another turquoise beauty, Lake Pukaki…

… that had an even better backdrop.

As we drove the length of the lake (nearly 10 miles), we kept getting more and more stunning views -

Mt. Cook dwarfs everything around it -

(did you notice the tiny cars in the bottom R corner?)

This was the view from our room in the hostel we stayed in ($200/night!) -

No, we didn’t stay in the dorm rooms, but we did cook our breakfast each morning (scrambled eggs and bacon) in the communal kitchen with a number of much younger like-minded hikers. The morning of our epic hike dawned gorgeously clear -

We had decided to tackle Sealy Tarns, which is “only” a 3.3 mile trail, but it is essentially straight up. We gained nearly 1800 ft. in 2.5 miles, as the first 3/4 mile was relatively flat.

There are 2200 steps (equivalent to climbing a 92 story building) !!

As we climbed higher, along with the sun, the views just kept improving -

While we’d catch our breath, I’d capture the scenes around us -

Here you can appreciate the slope of the “hill” we were climbing:

Can you guess why this trail is dubbed “Stairway to Heaven”?

Woohoo!

A tarn is a mountain lake or pool that was carved out by a glacier.

This one we celebrated by having our picture taken -

There were a number of crazy, much younger people who carried on up the mountain, another 2,000 ft and 2+ miles -

We had had enough of climbing, but not of walking. After descending, we took a side trail to the Mueller Lake we had seen from above…

… and were treated to several avalanches from a nearby hanging glacier -

The rolling thunder from the snow fall was impressive.

And no, we still weren’t done. It was such a gorgeous day that we took on one more (relatively) flat hike (after a lunch of PBJ’s) to Tasman Lake.

Tasman Lake…

… the glacier feeding it…

… and the river draining it -

That night we had one more treat waiting for us.

the Southern Cross is just to the left of the dark area in the Milky Way

Good night!