Hooked on the Hooker Valley

Sunday 23 February

Our day dawned gently cloudy and rather nippy - single figures Celsius. It was 8*C as I walked down to the shower block to wash my hair (unlimited free hot showers is a rare luxury on a campground - many of them give you 6 minutes for $1-2 then the water shuts off for 3-4 minutes which is a tad hectic for my liking!). Clouds were sitting low on the mountains and a few were drifting down the valleys but there was enough blue to foretell a sunny day ahead.

We gathered a picnic and multiple (unnecessary as it turned out) layers of clothing and joined the relentless stream of vehicles heading into the Aoraki Mt Cook National Park to tackle the 10km Hooker Valley Track to the lake at the base of the Hooker Glacier and back.

The walk was absolutely phenomenal and got sunnier and warmer as we went along - crossing three suspension bridges, several boardwalks and offering multiple stunning views of Mueller Glacier, Mt Brunner, Mt Sefton, Mt Wakefield, Mt Kinsey and of course, king of them all - Aoraki Mt Cook.

Just ahead of the first suspension bridge we got a fabulous clear view of the Mueller Glacier Lake basking in the sunshine. A huge advantage of a clear day like this is the definition on the mountains around - you can see all the nooks and crannies, the variegated terrain, the snow capped peaks and the smaller glaciers hanging in the valleys below the snow, sometimes melting into a tall slim waterfall. It was absolutely stunning.

As you walked up the valley it paid to take a look back behind you - particularly to get a wide open view down the valley to the start of Lake Pukaki - or sideways at the incredible mountains on either side with huge valleys and chasms and massive rockfalls of scree cascading down the slopes.

In a rare moment of cell tower coverage between two of the bridges I got a video call from my sister Caroline in London - she was zooming me into a gig featuring 80s band Cutting Crew - "I just died in your arms tonight"! We last came along this Hooker Valley Track with her in December 2022!

Just as we were beginning to wonder how much further we had to go, there was a bit of a climb, and as we crested the ridge we were greeted by the raison d'être for this track... The Hooker Glacier Lake is quite amazing - milky eau de nil coloured waters, being fed by glacial meltwater from its eponymous glacier, but also an incredibly tall waterfall from a higher glacier - maybe Hayter or Stewart - to the northwest of the lake.

We went down the track to the "beach" along the edge of the Lake and found a spot for a picnic, away from the madding crowds. I took off my trainers and went for a quick dibble for Debbie - it was definitely chilly but I would suggest no lower than 15-16*C.

We didn’t see any dislodged glacier chunks this time, nor a kea, but we certainly saw a LOT of tourists!

The trek back along the track was quicker and I had taken most of the pics on the way in - but you still see some different angles as you head down the valley. It was also odd to find that walkers were less friendly at this point - we had said hey/kia ora to heaps of people on the way up and had lots of responses - but very few on our way out. I'm still waiting to get a "Kia ora!" back again, but hey ho!

The white flowers on the lefthandside above, looked so perfect that I did a double take and wondered if they were fake flowers left in memoriam, but then I saw a few more (all in the slightly swampy & tussocky terrain) and a quick Google search suggested that they were Star of David flowers.

In the central pic you can see a tall pyramid-like cairn - this actually is a memorial, to the climbers who have died on Aoraki Mt Cook.

Back at the car afterwards we watched a parachutist float gracefully back to earth and then took a detour down Tasman Valley Road and found a bunch of other tracks to visit next time!

Chilled at the holiday park, made onward travel plans, did a spot of blogging and had more salmon for dinner. With a clear sky above us the stargazing, once night fell, was spectacular - I need to learn how to capture this on a real camera!