Mt Cook/Aoraki National Park

I made it to Mt Cook National Park around 9:00 pm. Luckily, I had almost another hour of daylight to find my way around, put up my tent and eat dinner before it would get dark. The mountains were incredible with ominous storm clouds rolling in. The picture above shows the transition from blue sky to the storm clouds over the mountain glaciers.

I enjoyed the pink gravity wave clouds in the opposite direction as I ate my dinner. I had stopped at a grocery store before leaving Christchurch and I finally had an endless supply of fresh fruit and vegetables, cheese, crackers and hummus. After my delicious dinner, I crawled into my tent for the night. It wasn't long before the winds started to pick up. As the winds started to get stronger, I started to think back to all of the other tents at the campsite. As I was walking in, I realized that many people had positioned their tents almost inside of the bushes along the mountains. In about an hour, I realized why. The winds were so strong (Chinook winds) that my tent, metal poles and all, was collapsing in on top of me. At first I was worried about being blown away, then I realized that I weighed enough to prevent that from happening. Next I worried about suffocating, but with a quick push of my hand I realized that was not a problem either. So I rolled over in my sleeping bag and tried to dream up different ways of telling Tom that I had broken our tent.

At about 4:00 am the winds finally ceased and I was able to fall asleep. I woke up about 5:30 am to the sound of rain pounding on the walls of my tent. My initial reaction was to pull up the sleeping bag and go back to sleep. After about 20 minutes of arguing with myself about wimping out on a little rain I pulled myself out of the tent, found my raincoat and packed the wet tent into the car. I found my backpack, some breakfast and a towel to wrap my camera in and headed out on the Hooker Valley trail. (Sorry that the pictures are all washed out - I had forgotten to change my settings from Antarctica and I wasn't downloading my pictures to my computer along the way, so I didn't realize it).

The Hooker Valley trail follows the valley up to the end of the Hooker glacier and usually to an amazing view of Mt Cook. Unfortunately for me, with the rain and cloud cover the views were very limited.

I saw these duck-like birds on the trail. My guess is that there must have been a nest nearby, because they were not happy with me. I could definitely hear the birds squawking, before I could see them.

There were two sets of suspension bridges on the trail. Suspension bridges are very popular for both foot and vehicle bridges in New Zealand. I usually love bridges. I am not sure if it was the persistent downpour, the rushing glacier water or the warning sign, but I was a little hesitant to cross this bridge by myself (I had not seen anyone else on the trail).

Similar to the discussion that I had with myself in the tent, it only took a little convincing and I was across the bridge.

About an hour into the hike, I realized that the rain and clouds were not going to lift. Therefore, I enjoyed the creek and lakes that I was hiking by and eventually turned around. I headed into the visitor's center to dry off and get a cup of coffee. The visitor's center has a great display on the history of mountaineering. The majority of the Mt Cook National Park cannot be accessed without technical mountaineering skills. The Mt Cook National Park is about 175,000 acres, but only has about a handful of walking/hiking trails.

Before heading out for Te Anau, I hiked the Tasman Glacier trail. This is a fun little hike that ends at the base of the Tasman Glacier. The end of the Tasman Glacier can be seen in the photo above. The majority of the glacier base is covered in dirt. At the base, there is a little lake with icebergs floating in the center.

Here is my driving route:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2587002