We were down in Dunedin for my work mid-winter party at Larnach Castle which is NZ’s only castle (or so they call it…its more of a stately home). Nonetheless, the “castle” is still impressive and the gardens and grounds are beautiful and well kept. It also helped that the day was stunning and full of sunshine after coming out of a rainy winter.

It was a fun few days hanging out with workmates and partners. Since we were already down south, Stephen and I decided to return back to Christchurch via a different route along the more scenic McKenzie District. The destination: Mt. Cook.

In the past I’ve found Mount Cook National Park hard to cope with due to the large number of tourists. It turns out we timed our trip perfectly as we were able to squeeze into a great hotel room for a good price and very few people were in the park.

We arrived late Saturday after breakfast at Larnach Castle, checked into the hotel, and headed down the Hooker Valley with a quickened step so that we could catch a sunset on Mount Cook. I’d been down the Hooker Valley once before, but in the rain. We lucked out this weekend with not one but two perfectly sunny days and great views of Mount Cook. The Hooker Valley track is very popular and easy going. It has three notable and picturesque swing bridges which converge at the partially frozen terminal lake of the Hooker Glacier.

We don’t exactly have glaciers in Pennsylvania so it was a pretty cool site to see. As we were walking back and the sun had dropped behind the mountains the temperature also dropped very quickly. We could hear the loud creaking and splitting of the glaciers as they adjusted to the change in temperature. We even saw a small avalanche on the valley sides. Plus, Stephen found Mount Stephen.

As we got back to our car it was getting dark outside so we went back to the accommodation and cooked our dinner in the communal kitchen – a lovely tortellini with fresh mushroom and onion cream sauce….with the wine saved for later. It was awesome to relax, eat, and soak up the warmth of the fire.

Because of the remoteness (though you get pretty good views most places in the south island) we went out and watched the stars and moon come up over the mountains. Not such great photos, but it was nice to just stand together in silence and listen to the creaking snowy slopes and watch the clear sky open up.

The next day we went over to the other valley on the opposite side of Mount Cook – the Tasman Valley. Once again, this trip consisted of glacier spotting. The Tasman Glacier is the largest in New Zealand. Though not quite as impressive as the Hooker Valley, we hope to go back to Mount Cook and do a bit of glacier walking on the Tasman up close and personal.

Another thing to note was that Stephen and I learned something new over the weekend. I’ve been getting really obsessed with adventure seekers and mountain climbers – particularly Everest and Sir Edmund Hillary, who trained for the first ascent of Everest on Mount Cook. So, Mount Cook actually has three peaks – the Low Peak, Middle Peak, and High Peak. Its pretty tough to actually see the High Peak unless you’re behind the mountain backcountry or about to climb it, but we were at least able to see the Middle Peak from the Tasman side. That was pretty cool to see.

We also looked at a few mountain climbing routes and made a few tentative plans for next adventures. Overall a weekend well spent 🙂