Mount Cook National Park; Hermitage Hotel, Tasman Lake Boat Ride (with icebergs) and Kim runs into a former co-worker

Mount Cook National Park is a little over 3 hours north of Queenstown. The first sign you are nearing the park is Lake Pukaki, which is perhaps the bluest lake you will ever see on the planet. Again, the photos we took do not do it justice. If you want to see what I mean just look at the photos on google earth.

The tall mountain in the background is Mount Cook, the tallest mountain in NZ, sitting at 12,218 feet. This mountain would become our constant companion for the next two days.

We are staying at the Hermitage Hotel, and I must say this is the best place to stay in the park. However, be warned, the “Standard” Rooms are pretty bad, as in a shoebox with a bed in it. A mouse would have claustrophobia! No AC, no desk, no room to think outside the box, nothing. Do NOT stay in one of these rooms, it will ruin your experience!

Fortunately, due to the recent Corona virus travel restrictions, they had a lot of availability, and we were able to upgrade to the Aoraki Wing, known as “Premium” rooms, for just $25 a night. That’s a total of $50 NZ, which is about $35 USD. No brainer! The rooms in this wing of the hotel are WAY WAY better. Just say no to the Standard Rooms if you ever come here. Here is the view from our upgraded room.

A zoomed in view of Mount Cook, from our window.

It has been truly rough sitting here drinking glasses of wine and looking at that mountain, along with the surrounding mountains, like these, covered with hanging glaciers.

We arrived mid afternoon, so we had time to do something in the park. We opted for the Glacier Explorer boat ride on Tasman Lake, and it was an excellent option. A bus took us from the Hermitage Lodge to the Tasman Lake trailhead, a short 1.5km walk to board the boat. This is the view of the Tasman valley along the short hike. This area was previously under 600 feet of ice.

We are ready to board the boat!

The boat drives around some of the icebergs that have recently calved off of the glacier.

The guide for the trip lines up the boat to take photos of everybody with the glacier and Mount Cook in the background.

Just before this photo was taken, a very rare event occurred, one that shocked our guide, as well as everybody in the boat. If you look in the above photo, just to the right of the large iceberg, there is a smaller iceberg (more photos to come). As I was handing my camera to the guide to take the above photo, we witnessed a “basal calve” shooting up out of the water like a breaching whale. It was so big and so blue that my first thought was “holy crap, a whale?”. The guide was aghast, as he had never witnessed this.

The mostly rectangular offshoot shot straight up out of the water from the bottom of the large iceberg, nearly completely clearing the water, and then slammed down on it’s side, just like a whale would. It was incredible to see, and nobody got a shot of it! Grrr!

The wave it created was impressive, to the point the guide was ready to bolt away, but it subsided quickly. We are very lucky it didn’t shoot up under our boat, as it would have tossed us all in the water for sure. Keep in mind that 90% of the “whale” iceberg in the following photos is under water.

This ice was so cool to look at and feel….the boat pulled right up to it. It was about 150 feet under water just minutes earlier.

The suspended rocks are so cool!

More suspended rocks. This was such a treat to see! Glacial ice is rarely this transparent…..we only had this view because it had just shot up from under the larger iceberg.

The knife edge at the end was so beautiful, like a work of art.

After everybody in the boat ohhhed and ahhhhed over this berg, we headed to the face of the Tasman Glacier. The boat doesn’t get within 500 meters of the face due to the risk of calving. I was hoping to get closer. I guess I like to live on the edge.

Tasman Lake is currently about 8km long. The lake first appeared in 1990, so the Tasman Glacier has receded 8km since then. Despite its recent retreat, Tasman Glacier remains the largest glacier in NZ, at 23.5 kms long. Part of the reason for the recent decline is the Feb 22, 2011, Christchurch earthquake, which caused 30 to 40 million metric tons of ice to calve from the terminal face into Tasman Lake, causing tsunami waves of up to 11 feet! Maybe it’s a good idea to stay back from the glacier face!

The first night in Mount Cook we ate in their nice restaurant, the Panaorama Room. Their other option was a buffet, and we just don’t do buffets unless it is forced upon us at a wedding. As we are walking into the dining room Kim runs into a teacher she worked with years ago, Lisa Burkhart. Imagine not only running into somebody from Livermore way out here in New Zealand, but running into somebody you actually worked with! Crazy small world!