Mt. Cook National Park

Mt. Cook National Park - one of the must-see places in New Zealand. This was made clear by the staggering amount of Japanese tourists in the area (easily the most I've seen in any one place outside of Japan). However, it is rightly so popular. Those sites of towering snow-covered mountains in the middle of summer contrasting with the greenery that surrounds you, the tremendous sounds of avalanches roaring down that make you feel as if the sky was crumbling down - simply awe inspiring.

Even though we arrived a little later than planned we were still set on doing everything we came to do. Starting off with hiking to the Hooker glacier. This was the the first glacier I'd ever seen, but I knew not to raise my expectations high as I'd heard it wasn't the most exciting one. We couldn't get too close to it as there was a glacial lake separating us from it. However, this didn't stop Niko from getting the full glacial experience. He decided it would be cool to climb an iceberg never mind that in order to get to one you actually had to swim in the ice cold water, and so he did to the amusement of everyone watching him.

After this short (3-hour front and back) hike we were ready to head to our main destination - Mueller hut. This was a very steep track up the mountain taking 3-4 hours to climb. Being the fit trampers that we are it took us 3 :P As we had started rather late in the afternoon we got a few remarks from people going down that we should hurry before the sun sets. One of our goals was to watch the sunset from the hut so that was our plan anyway and I must admit parts of the track would have been extremely difficult to walk in the dark having to climb large rocks and all. However, we weren't too worried as we were walking at a good pace even if my legs demanded a few breaks along the way.

Was a bit surprised, but the first part of the track was mostly stairs... really steep stairs but stairs none the less. They went all the way up to a lunch spot with a couple of tarns in which you could see the reflection of Mt. Sefton so I took a moment to capture it on camera as the lack of wind made the reflection as clear as can be.

When we finally reached the top we were a bit disappointed as it had gotten cloudy and we had to forget our goal of seeing the sunset... Couldn't see most of the amazing views we had heard about from passers-by, but luckily we were staying the night and had plenty of opportunities to do it the next day.

We woke up the next morning early enough to watch the sunrise and although it seemed as the clouds hadn't moved on, just  minutes before sunrise they cleared and opened up all the awesome views we hadn't been able to see the day before. As the sun was coming up we made our way up Mt. Olivier who's summit my friend Oliver was extremely excited to reach. The sun came up painting the mountaintops a warm pink colour as it rose and we admired all the natural beauty of the remarkable scenery in front of us.

Native buttercup

Mueller glacier