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Drive from Timaru inland through the McKenzie country past azure blue glacial lakes into the mountains of the Mount Cook National Park. The best way to experience the park is on foot on any one of a number of walks in the park that will take you up close to where you can experience the sights and sounds of the mountains and glaciers in this dramatic alpine environment.
With 19 peaks over 3,000 metres in height, the Aoraki / Mt
Cook National Park is probably the most famous of the great parks on the main divide. Named Aoraki, 'the cloud piercer’ by the early Maori, Aoraki / Mt Cook is New Zealand’s highest peak, a 3754 m monolith of rock, ice and
snow that is
the subject of a number of Maori legends describing its creation. East of the park lies the vast tussock-covered highland that is known as the Mackenzie Country. The area is named after James McKenzie, a Scottish drover about whose exploits there are numerous stories, many of them untrue. It was recorded, however, that one evening in 1855, he was caught near Burkes
Pass, along with his dog Friday, driving a mob of 1000 sheep that had
been stolen from a station in Timaru. McKenzie maintained that he thought they were
the mob of sheep he had been hired to drive over a back-country route by an Otago farmer.
McKenzie got away, but was later caught at Lyttelton trying to find a ship on which he could escape
from Canterbury. Always protesting his innocence, McKenzie was eventually sentenced to
5 years' imprisonment, but broke out of the Lyttelton prison three times in nine
months before he was pardoned by the Governor of New Zealand.
Pleasant Point
1PLEASANT POINT
From the intersection of SH1 and SH8 at the northern end of Timaru, drive northwest on SH8 and the Pleasant Point Highway 13.8 km to Pleasant Point.
The railway museum at Pleasant Point is
the resting place for the Fairlie Flyer, a 1922
vintage steam locomotive and its carriages, one
of which is a rare birdcage carriage dating back to
1895. You can also see the world's only Ford Model
T railcar. A restored railway station filled
with memorabilia from the era, features an
old manual telephone exchange, a vintage
radio station and printing press as well as
a reconstruction of a general store in the
1920s, complete with authentic household
items that were on sale during the period.
2FAIRLIE
Continue northwest on SH8 and the Pleasant Point Cave Highway 16.1 km then continue on SH8 and the Cave Albury Road 10.7 km onto the Albury Fairlie Road 16.4 km to Fairlie.
Named after the birthplace of the town's
first hotel owner in Ayreshire, Scotland,
Fairlie features beautiful tree-lined avenues that were planted by
the early settlers. The colonial Mabel Binney
Cottage, the Vintage Machinery Museum and
the historic limestone woolshed of the Three
Springs Sheep Station are all located on the
main highway west of the town.
Tekapo - Sheepdog
3LAKE TEKAPO
Continue northwest 42.6 km on SH8 and the Fairlie Tekapo Road to Lake Tekapo.
From the road there are
sweeping views across the turquoise waters of Lake Tekapo which gets its distinctive colour
from the fine particles of powdered rock that
are held in suspension in these glacial
meltwaters. The Church of the Good Shepherd is signposted on the right. The lake provides a picturesque, mountain-framed setting for the church, making it one of the most photographed in the country. This lonely
little church was built from stone and oak in
1935. A nearby statue of a border collie is a
tribute to the sheepdogs brought here in the 19th Century by the Scottish shepherds who came to work on the pastoral runs on the eastern side of the Southern Alps.
Lake Pukaki
4Lake Pukaki
Continue northwest on SH8 and the Tekapo Twizel Road 47 km to Lake Pukaki.
Below Aoraki/Mt Cook and Mt Tasman, the Hochstetter Icefall feeds snow and ice into the Tasman Glacier from a huge snowfield known as the Grand Plateau. The Tasman River carries melt-waters from the Tasman, Murchison, Hooker and Mueller glaciers into Lake Pukaki, where the white and grey particles of crushed rock suspended in the water, reflect the light to create the distinctive azure colour of the lake. Lake Pukaki has the largest storage of water fro power generation in New Zealand, followed by nearby Lake Tekapo and Lake Taupo.
Hydroelectricity is a renewable resource and provides 70% of New Zealand’s electricity. The water is also used for irrigation projects east of the Main Divide.
5KEA POINT NATURE WALK
Continue southwest 1.8 km on the Tekapo Twizel Road and SH8 then turn right onto Mount Cook Road and drive 55 km to the Mount Cook Village.
For a better view of the huge ice faces on Mt
Sefton as well as a close-up look at the
Mueller Glacier, there is an excellent
walking track from the
Hermitage out to Kea Point. The track crosses tussock-covered river flats and stream
fans to where it meets another track from White
Horse Hill before entering an area of subalpine scrub
covering the gravel fans and forming a
dense barrier which the track tunnels
through. At the base of the Sealy
Range the track branches, to the Sealy
Tarns and Mueller Hut via a track to the left and to Kea Point ahead. Within 15 minutes you will
reach one of the Mueller
Glacier's lateral moraines, looking
down on the rock-strewn surface of the
glacier, dotted with sinkholes. On a
clear day you can look across the
glacier and see the three peaks of Mt
Cook in the distance, while only the
width of the glacier away, is the
towering south-east face of Mt Sefton.
It takes 90
minutes to reach Kea Point from the
Hermitage.
BLUE ICE
The huge ice faces, hanging glaciers
and avalanche chutes of Mt Sefton make an
impressive sight from most places in the valley near the Mt Cook Village. You can clearly see
blue glacial ice that was formed as successive
layers of snow pressed down, compacting the layers beneath. The air is squeezed out of the
snow, forming large crystals of blue
ice. In areas such as Antarctica and
Greenland, the change to blue ice
occurs deep beneath the surface and
can take up to 3000 years. Around the
Mount Cook National Park however,
blue ice may form within as little as five
years at a depth of less than 20 m. The blue ice clinging to the almost sheer
faces of Mt Sefton is continually
moving downwards under its own
weight, producing avalanches and
ice-falls which can be heard from
the Mount Cook Village.
HOOKER VALLEY
Branching from the Kea Point Walk, a track heads north to the White Horse Hill car park before continuing north to the Hooker River and across into the Hooker Valley. From the suspension
bridges over the Hooker River on the first part
of the walk, you can see giant schist boulders in the riverbed and if you stop and
listen, you are bound to hear the crack and
thunder of rock and ice breaking from the
huge peaks that surround the valley. The
towering south-east face of Mt Sefton lies
directly ahead, with its sheer ice faces,
hanging glaciers and avalanche chutes. This
is a spectacular landscape where you can
witness the forces of nature at work carving
the rock with wind, water and ice. In spring the alpine
meadows in the Hooker Valley come alive with alpine daisies and the
famous Mt Cook lily. You should allow 3 to 4 hours to make a return trip into the Hooker Valley.
MOUNT COOK LILY
In the Southern Alps, the harsh alpine
environment ensures that only the
hardiest and best adapted plants
survive. The Mount Cook Lily is one of
20 alpine plant species that die back to
ground level each year after
flowering, enabling them to survive on the cold,
snow-covered slopes during winter.
The first flowers appear on these plants
in mid-October in the Tasman Valley
along the Blue Stream. They bloom in
most of the valleys during November,
December and January, although you
can still find them flowering above the
scrubline later in the season. These
beautiful, delicate white flowers are
stronger than they appear and are
capable of surviving late snowfalls. The Mount Cook Lily is actually a
giant buttercup, its white petals and
distinctive shape having been
incorported in a number of symbols
linked with the Park. Virtually all New
Zealand's native alpine flowers are
either yellow or white, colours which stand
out better in an alpine environment and
attract the flies, moths and beetles that
help to pollinate plants growing in the
mountains.
SEALY TARNS
Branching from the Kea Point Nature
Walk, the track to the Sealy Tarns
involves a steep, two-hour climb from
the valley floor. Alpine shrubs cover
the slopes of the Sealy Range and in
summer you will find an array of alpine
flowers which make this an interesting
trip. In winter these slopes are prone to
avalanches and should be avoided. The Sealy Tarns are reached
halfway up the range, 500 m above
the valley floor. Tucked away on a
narrow ledge, the shallow tarns are
a pleasant place for a swim after a
hot climb during summer. They were
named after Edward Sealy, a surveyor
from Timaru who carted the first
photographic equipment into the Mt
Cook area. Between 1867 and 1870
he explored most of the glaciers,
carrying a huge wet-plate camera, probably
weighing over 25 kg, along with
all the gear that went with it, to take photographs which won him a gold
medal at an international competition
in Vienna.
mueller hut
If you really want to get a taste of a high mountain environment you can continue on the track from the Sealy Tarns and climb higher through tussock
towards the Mueller Hut another two
hours further up the mountain. The track soon becomes a
route across rock-strewn slopes
marked only by rock cairns. Carry a map with
you, or acquaint yourself with the
route before leaving, as many people
have difficulty finding the hut.
Weatherproof clothing is also
important higher up on the ridgeline,
which can be exposed to high winds and
rapidly changing weather conditions. The Mueller Hut is 1830 m above
sea level in a truly alpine environment.
The crest of the Sealy Range provides
fantastic views of the mountains that
surround the Mueller Glacier,
stretching away along the line of the
Main Divide towards Mt Cook in the
distance.
Nearby is the summit of Mt Olliver, the first peak climbed by Sir Edmund Hillary at the start of his mountaineering career.
6GLACIER KAYAKING
From the Old Mountaineers' Cafe next door to the DOC visitor centre at Aoraki Mt Cook National Park, you can organize to go on a kayaking trip on the glacial lake at the end of the Tasman Glacier.
Glacier Kayaking is an exciting experience involving paddling through the icebergs that fill the terminal lake at the end of the Tasman Glacier. The Tasman Glacier is 27 km long and up to 3 km wide, making it New Zealand’s largest glacier. The lake at the end of the glacier has been formed behind a natural rock dam called a terminal moraine. The rock was dumped off the end of the glacier over hundreds of years, and then as the glacier began to retreat, the dam created a lake from the glaciers meltwaters. Most of the world's glaciers are
shrinking at present due to climates
which are gradually becoming
warmer. The ice however, will keep
flowing as long as snow keeps falling
on the snowfields that feed the
glaciers. During warmer periods the
ice does not flow as far because it is
melting faster than it can accumulate, so the glaciers appear as if they are retreating. Some glaciers
that are protected by a covering layer of rock do not retreat. Instead, their surface
slumps. The Tasman Glacier is a good
example of a slumping glacier with a
surface that has dropped over 130 m in the
last century. During
the Ice Ages this glacier once
extended over 115 km down the valley where it carved out the giant depression now filled by
Lake Pukaki. Over 1 km deep, it would have buried the site of the
present Mt Cook Village.
Climatologists have estimated that six
extremely cold winters would be enough to start
another period of glaciation, causing
the glaciers to start advancing back down the valleys.
GLACIAL LANDSCAPES
The glaciers are bordered by lateral
moraines made up of huge piles of rock that have been dumped
off the ice along the sides of the glacier. The surface of the lower reaches of the
glaciers are covered
in a layer of rock that hides the blue
ice below. The rocks have spread across the glacier from landslides further
up the valley and although the
coating is only a few metres deep, it is
enough to protect the ice from the sun
and reduce the rate of melting. When Haast arrived in 1862, the
rock-covered Tasman Glacier was much
higher than its lateral moraines. He
had to climb the moraine and then
climb higher over the rock-strewn
ice to get onto the surface of the
glacier. At that stage, the glacier
would have still been dumping large
quantities of rock onto the lateral
moraines. Since the turn of the century
however, warmer temperatures have
caused it to shrink. The surface has
gradually slumped at a rate averaging a metre per year, so that now instead
of climbing from the moraine onto the
glacier, there is a dangerous 130 m
slope to descend before reaching its
surface. The
ice is 200 m deep in the lower reaches of the glacier, becoming deeper higher up
where it reaches a depth of
600 m only a few kilometers further up the valley. The glaciers are always on the move, driven down the slope by their enormous weight.
They slide downhill on a layer of water
and crushed rock, traveling up to 5 m
a day or more, depending on the size
of the glacier and the steepness of the
slope. Most of
the rock carried by a glacier is
transported within the glacier itself,
encased in ice but eventually
appearing on the surface as the
surrounding ice melts.