Peter’s Lookout to Aoraki Mt Cook
Aoraki Mt Cook from Peter’s Lookout
One of the best views of Aoraki Mt Cook that is available along the road from Tekapo to the Mt Cook Village is from a layby on the side of the road called Peter’s Lookout. For such a prominently signposted viewpoint it is a disappointment to drive onto a rough gravel car park with no information boards to explain the surrounding scenery, especially the mountains at the end of the lake. In the foreground is a newly cut pine plantation littered with the remains of the forestry operation. However, if you can overlook the immediate negative impressions, you are presented with this magnificent vista which features New Zealand’s highest mountain which towers to 3,754 metres (12,316 ft).
Aoraki Mt Cook is head and shoulders higher than the surrounding peaks. It is a technically difficult mountain to climb and a favourite challenge for the climbing fraternity. The first European ascent was on 25 December 1894. New Zealand’s famous mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary made his first ascent in January 1948. On 29 May 1953 he and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first people to successfully climb Mt Everest.
Mount Doom, Mordor
“Mt Doom”
Mt Ruapehu in the middle of the North Island of New Zealand is a mountain I was introduced to in my teens. Prior to that I had driven past it on the Desert Road, which forms part of State Highway 1. It was from the Desert Road that this image was taken. Over the years I have hiked, skied, climbed and stayed on the mountain in all of the seasons of the year. Our family of three boys learned to ski here.
In 1953 the Crater Lake at the top of the mountain broke through a ice plug in the side of the crater and flowed rapidly down the Whangaehu River, washing out the railway bridge at Tangiwai on the Main Trunk Line just before the express train from Wellington to Auckland was due to pass over it. At 10.21 pm on 24 December the train ploughed into the river killing 151 crew and passengers. This tragic accident happened during the first visit to New Zealand of the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II.
The volcano is still active and from time to time it erupts into life, the last time in 2007.
Mt Ruapehu and the surrounding area proved ideal as the dark and savage realm of ‘Mordor’ and ‘Mount Doom’ in the “Lord of the Rings” films. Whakapapa Ski Field, on the slopes of Ruapehu, supplied Middle Earth’s snowy slopes and the opening battlefield on the slopes of ‘Mount Doom’, where an alliance of men and elves defeats the armies of ‘Mordor’.
The mountain often has a gloomy feel to it when viewed across the desert-like foreground of the Central North Island Plateau, across which the Desert Road runs.
Living Tenaciously
Living Tenaciously
On the main highway between Christchurch and Arthurs Pass on New Zealand’s South Island are the grand limestone rock battlements of Kura Tawhiti, which early European travellers named Castle Hill. The area attracts climbers, families, students and tourists who are drawn to this spectacular place to explore its natural beauty.
This lone flower was found clinging tenaciously to a limestone tor, much like the climbers who were scaling the rocky outcrops nearby. On the day of our visit there were at least six climbing groups practicing their skills.
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