Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park

The landscape is defined by scale. U-shaped valleys carved by glaciers, lakes of glacial blue, and a mountain range that includes the highest peaks in New Zealand: Aoraki / Mount Cook at 3,724 metres, and the twenty peaks above 3,000 metres that make up the Southern Alps in this stretch. The Hooker Valley track, the most popular short walk in the park, uses the flat floor of a glacial valley to deliver you face to face with this scale in a three-hour round trip.

Nearly 40 percent of the park is covered by glaciers, including the Haupapa / Tasman Glacier, New Zealand's longest at approximately 23 kilometres. The blue of glacial lakes here is not a metaphor: the fine glacial flour suspended in the water scatters light to produce the distinctive turquoise that is one of the defining visual characteristics of the New Zealand alpine landscape.

The Southern Alps are geologically young and still rising — the range is being pushed up by the collision of the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates at a rate of roughly 10 mm per year, while simultaneously being worn down by glaciers and rivers. The landscape you see is a snapshot of an ongoing geological conversation.

The mountain beech forest in the lower Hooker and Tasman valleys is a complete contrast to the exposed alpine zone above the tree line: dense, quiet, and rich with birdsong in the early morning. The transition from forest to alpine herb field to scree and snow takes place within 500 metres of vertical gain, one of the most compressed ecological sequences in New Zealand.

Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park is managed by the Department of Conservation in partnership with Ngāi Tahu, the iwi who are mana whenua in the region. The dual name reflects the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act of 1998, which formally recognised the original Māori names alongside the English ones. In Ngāi Tahu tradition Aoraki is a sacred ancestor — the highest and most revered of the ancestors who came to New Zealand on the Arawa waka.

The park shares its western boundary with Westland Tai Poutini National Park along the Main Divide of the Southern Alps, and is part of the Te Wāhipounamu World Heritage Site (1990) that also includes Fiordland, Mount Aspiring and Westland national parks — 26,000 square kilometres of protected wilderness that is one of the most significant conservation areas on Earth.

The only road access is State Highway 80, which runs from Lake Pukaki to Mount Cook Village at the foot of the mountains. The road ends at the village, and the walking tracks — Hooker Valley, Sealy Tarns, Mueller Hut — all begin from there. The park has no through roads; this is the end of the line, which is entirely appropriate.

The Southern Alps at their most dramatic: the highest peak in New Zealand, the longest glacier, and a glacial landscape in a park that has been protected since 1885 and inscribed as World Heritage in 1990.

The concentration of extreme geography within a relatively small area makes Aoraki / Mount Cook one of the most visually impactful national parks in the world — the scale is accessible from the valley floor without technical climbing.

The dual World Heritage status of Te Wāhipounamu (1990) and the cultural significance of the mountains to Ngāi Tahu give the park an importance that goes well beyond its landscape, even in a country known for dramatic scenery.