Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park

About

Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park is a national park located in the Canterbury Region in the central-west of the South Island of New Zealand. It was established in October 1953 and takes its name from the highest mountain in New Zealand, Aoraki / Mount Cook. The area of the park is 707 km2 (273 mi2), and it shares a border with Westland Tai Poutini National Park along the Main Divide of the Southern Alps. The national park consists of reserves that were established as early as 1885 to protect the area's significant landscape and vegetation. Glaciers cover 40% of the park, including the country's largest glacier, Haupapa / Tasman Glacier. In 1990, the park was included in the area designated as the Te Wāhipounamu World Heritage Site. The park is managed by the Department of Conservation (DOC) alongside Ngāi Tahu, the iwi who are mana whenua in the region. At the end of the most recent ice age approximately 13000 years ago, numerous glaciers in the park were tributaries of a much larger glacier covering all of Hooker Valley and Tasman Valley in hundreds of metres of ice. This glacier reached beyond the southern end of today's Lake Pukaki, up to 40 km (25 mi) south of Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park. As it retreated, it filled the hollowed-out valleys, leaving behind the U-shaped valleys seen today in the national park. Early European surveyors and explorers ventured into the alpine region surrounding Aoraki / Mount Cook from the 1850s. Many of the geographical features in the national park were named by or after them. The Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act passed in October 1998 recognised the original names of some geographical features, establishing dual English / Māori names. Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park is home to more than four hundred species of plants, including more than one hundred introduced species. There are about thirty-five species of birds in the park, most notably the rare black stilt and pīwauwau. The only road access into the park is via State Highway 80 which starts 65 km (40 mi) away near Twizel, the closest town, and leads directly to Mount Cook Village along the western shore of Lake Pukaki. Mount Cook Aerodrome is a small airfield located 5 km (3.1 mi) southeast of Mount Cook Village within the national park. Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park is a popular tourist destination. There are numerous walking tracks, the most popular being the Hooker Valley Track, a relatively short track that takes around three hours to complete. The park is also popular with astrophotographers and star-gazers because of the low levels of light pollution. An area including Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park and the Mackenzie Basin was designated as the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve in June 2012. The national park has been used as a filming location for numerous films.

In Māori mythology, Aoraki was one of the sons of Raki the Sky Father. One version of the legend states that Aoraki came down from heaven in a canoe with three of his brothers, Rakiroa, Rakirua and Rārakiroa, to visit his father Raki's new wife Papatūānuku, but the waka (canoe) overturned. The brothers climbed on to the overturned canoe, becoming the mountains Aoraki / Mount Cook, Rakiroa (Mount Dampier), Rakirua (Mount Teichelmann) and Rārakiroa (Mount Tasman). The waka itself became the Southern Alps (Kā Tiritiri o te Moana). Although there is no evidence of permanent or temporary Māori settlement within the national park, some artefacts and evidence of burnt vegetation have been found in the nearby Mackenzie Basin. These may be related to nomadic parties who would spend months here hunting moa or fighting other parties. Māori would burn tōtara forests to assist them with their hunting of moa and gathering food, mostly weka, eels and kiore, before heading to the West Coast in search of pounamu. In 1896, mountaineer Arthur Harper wrote that Māori had a deep-seated fear of the mountains and preferred to stay lower down in the valleys. However, Māori did have knowledge of the various features of high alpine areas, with special words for different types of ice and snow. Historian Johannes Carl Andersen believed it was possible that Māori had travelled over the Main Divide, which is at the northern boundary of Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park, to trade pounamu.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.