Glacier Sea Kayaking - Mt. Cook

Well it was another weekend away and this time it took place in the west-central part of the Southern Island of New Zealand at Mt. Cook National Park. Mt. Cook is part of the Southern Alps and is the highest point in New Zealand standing just over 12,300 feet. Since they don't do Thanksgiving here and Turkey costs over $100 for a decent sized bird, some friends of mine and I decided to take a post "Thanksgiving holiday" to do some hiking and kayaking! This was our treat to ourselves!

Mt. Cook features gorgeous mountain ranges and there are over 70 named glaciers in this park. It's the neatest thing about New Zealand is one day you are walking on ice and in just a few hours you could be on a beach somewhere or in a rainforest climate! It's surreal!

Saturday we took a 4 hour hike out to one of the glacier lakes and later a small trip to another glacier lake where we were able to see several icebergs floating around having broken off from the main glacier. We were able to actually take kayaks into the water on one of these glacier lakes and were able to get within about 150 meters of the face of the glacier. It really is very active and you could hear and see rock falling off the glacier and small bits of ice coming up from under the water.

I'm attaching a few pictures from the weekend!
Hope you enjoy.