Home » Adventures » New Zealand Extended Holiday » Mount Cook NP

Route I Walked
15 km

This national park was a stunning area, with mountains rising over a thousand meters straight up from the valley floor and glaciers covering the high slopes. The park offers more mountaineering options than tramping ones, but I still enjoyed the usual day hikes in the Mount Cook Village area. I also made an overnight trek to Ball Hut. Its views of the tail end of the Tasman Glacier were amazing — the snow sheet several kilometers wide and the hole left behind a hundred meters deep. I scrambled up Ball Ridge, climbing up some steep and loose rock until I hit snow fields. There I had some spectacular view of Mount Cook and the surrounding mountains on a beautifully clear day.