iCommunicate Landscapes

Lofty and permanently snow covered peaks with more than 14 being over 3000m dominate the perspectives of Mount Cook National Park, their bases forming the courses of 5 major glaciers [far more if the adjoining Westland National Park is taken into account]. Mount Cook itself though, totally dominates the lot with it's sheer bulk and height and it is interestingly not on the main divide between Westland and Mount Cook National Parks, but somewhat off towards the drier east, although it may not appear to be so due to it's imposing size in relation to it's neighbours.

Main access by road to the park is a short 40 min. drive off of the main highway, the inland scenic route from essentially Christchurch to Queenstown.

The village hosts accommodation choices from luxury [The Hermitage Hotel] to motels and a camping ground. However the village has not developed organically due to stringent controls on the limited land suitable for developments within a national park. For example it is not possible to own your own home there, and renting is only available to those needed to maintain the tourism and Dept. of Conservation infrastructures.

Glacier melt and snow/rain runoff end up in the huge lakes of the MacKenzie Country, Pukaki and Tekapo, that feed the Waitaki river. The largest glacier in the Park [and in NZ] the Tasman,  is 29Km long, but is totally a different beast to the Fox and Franz glaciers "over the hill" in Westland National Park, which, being steeper move faster than the Tasman. Consequently in these warmer times while the Fox and Franz retreat the Tasman down-melts, not becoming shorter, but instead becoming less thick.

The effect of the extensive glaciation processes at work in the park are evidenced by the azure turquoise waters of the lakes Pukaki and Tekapo where the ground-up rock particles called "rock flour" have still not had time to settle.

Ironically, Capt. James Cook missed seeing the mountain that was later to bear his Pakeha name in his explorations of the coast of New Zealand in the seventeen hundreds probably because of the frequent bad weather:  constant westerlies push warm moist air against the Southern Alps thus causing the air to rise into cooler climes which leads to condensation [cloud and rain]. Instead Mount Cook was named by Capt. John Stokes of the survey vessel Acheron a couple of years later.