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I spent a few days in the very pleasant town of Geraldine getting caught up with my website. Then the skies cleared, so I headed back down to the Southern Alps to see Mt. Cook National Park. Not surprisingly, Mt. Cook, the tallest peak in New Zealand at about 11,000' (and named after early explorer, Captain James Cook) is located here. I'm really glad I waited until the sun came out to visit the park. The campground – like most other New Zealand campgrounds, just a grassy field without many facilities and no picnic tables, but very cheap – was really packed, but I camped there anyway because the alpine surroundings were just so darn beautiful.
I hiked up to Hooker Glacier the next morning, which took four hours, during which I passed approximately two-thirds of the entire population of Japan. The glacier was pretty dirty and not that interesting, but the hike through the alpine meadows was amazing and I was surrounded on all sides not only by cirques, aretes, moraines, and all kinds of other interesting glacial landforms, but also by hordes of Japanese camera-toting tourists. If you like glaciers like I do, Mt. Cook National Park is a terrific place to visit – even if you're not Japanese.
Above left: The skies finally cleared after I'd spent two rainy days in Geraldine, so I retraced my steps and headed back down to the "Southern Alps." This time I could actually see them. Above center: I've seen tour buses everywhere on this trip. There are LOTS of tourists in New Zealand now – including me. Above right: The dam spillway at Lake Tekapo.
Above left: Driving up to Mt. Cook, the tallest peak in New Zealand. Lake Pukaki is in the distance. That blue color is from the glacial "flour," or ground rock that's in the water. This part of the central South Island is really dry, although the area a few miles west of here gets several feet of rain each year. Talk about a rainshadow. Above right: After I'd spent a month in rainy New Zealand, the weather was finally nice enough to set up my tent and camp. This is in Mt. Cook National Park.
Above left: The view from my campsite at Mt. Cook National Park. Above center: This is on the way up to Hooker Glacier. That's one of the many swing bridges that I've hiked across during the past few weeks. They're lots of fun. Above right: The Mueller River was covered by a giant sheet of ice only a few hundred years ago.
Above left: Asters on the trail. Above center: The dirty Hooker Glacier (right) and Mt. Cook. Note the icebergs floating in the lake. Above right: Mt. Cook, at just over 11,000 feet, is about as high as Oregon's Mt. Hood. It's also at about the same latitude, around 45 degrees. And it's also named after a British navy guy from the 1700s.
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