the last weekend of may, the weather was looking pretty awful just about everywhere in the country, so david, laura, john, and i decided to take it easy and go to mt. cook for the weekend and stay in a hostel. after you've been going tramping every weekend, a hostel is luxuuuurious. there are showers, tv, heat, real plates, a refrigerator, a kitchen - pretty amazing for people used to lowered standards of just about everything for a weekend. and we all forgot towels - none of us are used to being able to shower over the weekend.
mt. cook (aoraki "cloud piercer") is, by the way, the tallest mountain in new zealand. where kiwis like, say, sir edmund hillary, learned mountaineering.
we left saturday morning, which meant that for once we were able to enjoy the scenery during the drive:
[courtesy of laura]
despite the poor weather outlook, the goal for the weekend was to just catch a glimpse of mt. cook. after checking into the hostel, and we headed off to do the walk up the hooker glacier valley, which (according to the lonely planet (we are such tourists) promises views absolutely dominated by mt. cook.
the weather, however, wasn't cooperating.
still, the moraine and glacial lake were pretty impressive.
[mt. cook is on the right ... somewhere]
we made dinner and spent the evening watching pulp fiction. we decided to get a fairly early start in the morning and were rewarded as we drove to the parking lot near the trailhead for another day walk:
[the most impressive part is that none of the other peaks are even close to as tall]
magnificent, isn't it?
we climbed up to the sealy tarns, about halfway to mueller hut, and on the way up, the clouds rolled back in and covered up mt. cook.
[the tarns]
[view back into the valley]
and on the way home, we stopped by the tasman glacier (the biggest glacier in new zealand)
[the glacier is actually beneath all that rock stuff and the lake. you can see the actual ice way far back on the left]
1 comment:
You like stars. You like musicals.
"Stars in your multitudes, scarce to be counted, filling the darkness with order and light, you are the sentinels silent and sure keeping watch in the night, keeping watch in the night. You know your place in the sky, you hold your course and your aim, and each in your season returns and returns, and is always the same...and so it has been, and so it's written on the doorway to paradise..." Les Mis
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