Day Eight - Mount Cook!

Day Eight already. Wow.

We've done a fair bit, but it also feels like these three weeks are flying by. Admittedly three of them consisted mostly of travel reports actually getting here (can't wait for transporters), but I'm hoping that by writing the events down it will somehow ground my memories and when I look back, make the whole experience seem longer. Make sense?

Day Eight saw us adventure around the playground of New Zealands tallest mountain Mount Cook. At 12,218 feet it stands around 3 times higher than the tallest mountain back home (Ben Nevis, 4,409 ft).

Unfortunately the weather was awful. It was the first day of rain, and wow did it rain. This meant that any chance of a helicopter ride were dashed as even if they could fly, the cloud would stop us seeing anything.

Instead, we hit the Lonely Planet guide once again and took a trip to Mount Cook village (the base camp) and headed out on the Hooker Valley trail, a route that took us right under the shadow of the mountain and promised spectacular views.

Because of the rain, no-one in the vicinity wanted to play. We had the whole mountain all to ourselves. It was misty, rainy, lonely and amazingly atmospheric.

For most of the journey I'll let the pics do most of the talking.

Once we reached Mount Cook, we found the cherry on the cake:

Yep. icebergs.

Icebergs!! Mount Cook and the surroundings is covered in glacier, so apparently icebergs can be quite a common site. Still, I wasn't expecting them at all.

To put the size of the begs into perspective, here's this shot. The tiny pixel of red on the far left is Yo.

You could build a house on there! Several, even.

We were even treated to pics of the summit of the mountain, which until then had been perpetually covered in mist. We'd walked through cold and rain to get there, and the mountain had honoured our sacrifice.

The walk further spoiled us with glorious sunshine for most of the walk back, and whist this gave some even more spectacular views of mountains no longer shrouded in mist, it also brought out every single hiker in the vicinity. I couldn't help but feel a little elitist as I trudged past the hundreds of people all trying to get a glimpse of Mount Cook now the sun had come out. We'd done it in much harsher conditions, and as such we'd been privileged to have the whole route to ourselves.

It certainly was a hike to remember.