Into the Alps

 
November 9th & 10th

Monday morning, and a short flight down to Christchurch to meet my fellow travellers for a 2 week activity tour of South Island. The party consists of 3 brits, 1 aussie, 7 americans and our two kiwi guides, ranging in age from mid-20s to mid-70s – and I’m guessing that the two 70-year olds will be the fittest of the lot.

The first day was mainly taken up by the long drive down to the area known as Mackenzie Country, after the country’s greatest anti-hero. Mackenzie was a sheep rustler of epic proportions, eventually controlling a flock of 1,000 stolen sheep with the assistance of a single dog. When he was eventually caught, the dog was put on trial and sentenced to death, while Mackenzie fled to Australia and was never heard of again.

Appropriately, our home for the next two nights, is a remote 60,000 acre sheep farm, formerly used to accommodate sheep shearers. But this little house on the prairie has one of the most spectacular views imaginable – the turquoise blue waters of Lake Pukaki backed by a section of the Southern Alps, including Mount Cook. At 3784m, Mount Cook is Australasia’s highest peak (its Maori name, Aoraki, means “cloud-piercer”). Sir Edmund Hillary trained for his Everest assault on this peak, but it is 10m lower than it was. In 1991 part of the peak collapsed, with 50 million cubic metres of ice, snow and the rock beneath cascading down into the glacier below. This extraordinary avalanche travelled 7km before coming to rest.

The picture-postcard colour of the lake is due to the ground-up glacial rock “flour” that remains in the water and apparently reflects more light. It is yet another awesome NZ sight, and we all rushed to take pictures in the evening light. I was up at 6am the following morning to record the pink-tinged dawn coming up over “cloud-piercer.”

After breakfast we layered up and drove around the lake to Mount Cook national park to take a 8km (5 miles) hike up, and down, one of cloud-piercer’s smaller neighbours. The 3 hour hike to Sealy Tarn took us through shrubby forest peppered with the pretty Mount Cook lily – the world’s largest buttercup – up to the the snow-line, with great views of the blue-veined glacial snow, and the glacial valley. It was steep, tough climb up but coming down the rocky shale was even harder – especially for someone with borderline vertigo. I got to the bottom with a real sense of achievement, and relief that I was down in one piece. We came across a mountain rescue team on a drill practice both on our climb up and back down, lowering a guy in a gurney feet first down the mountain face. Apparently he was the boss – believe me it was a pretty good exercise in trust!