Mt. Cook Nat. Park
The south island of New Zealand is a paradise for trekkers. Neither bears nor poison snakes are not found by the different ecological system from the northern hemisphere. "Milford Track" is a worldwide famous trekking course, however, it is conducted by the complete advanced reserved system and awfully difficult to particaipte easily due to fully booking all the time. Let's introduce easy walking courses in Mt. Cook National Park.
We stayed at Hotel Chalet at "Lake Tekapo", which is fantastically beautiful in turquoise color by melted glacier water flowing-in. Because we were scheduled to stay that night in Queenstown, and must find a hotel there, we decided to enjoy an easy walking in Mt. Cook National Park on the way. It took approx. 1 hr and 30 min. to arrive in the park center, and there were lots of tourists to be staying in famous "Hermitage" Hotel inside the park. We were told that there were 4 courses for walking in that information desk and we took unintentionally the flat Kea Point Track as we failed to find out the entrance point of climbing Glencaw Course.
The extending red line dwon to the right hand bottom end is "Kea Point Track" , the longest 4 hr walking course out of 4 tracks. We determined to come back the same route after 1 hr walking out. We could meet Japanese-lady groups on the way, in mid-January, i.e., in real summer season. The trekking trail is nearly flat, traversing several dry rivers and we had difficulties to look for shade points due to almost bush tree areas.
The white-color looking trail is nearly falt and downhill course, and it is prepared in the river crossing areas rather in the mountainsides. It was said to take 4hr for return trip to a good view point for Fukker Galcier, and we did not confirm that time span. We could see, however, the beautiful white summit of Mt. Cook all the time in the trail.
We could enjoy a beautiful view of Mt.Cook even from the bushes on the trail. It was too hot to try a long-time walking in spite of good weather conditions, and we were lucky, in other words, to take a clear look of Mt. Cook in this day, because its area is located in very wet climate region. In fact, the weather was getting cloudy in the afternoon and it was rainy in the next day.
1 hour passed since the start of walking, and we were almost in the middle point to Kea Point. Trailways were well maintained except for river traversing areas. We sat in the tiny shade side along the trail to have lunches bought at the shop of Hermitage Hotel. And we returned to the parking lot of the park center to leave for Queenstown.
Necessary time span was approx. 2 hour from the park center till the mid-point to Kea Point, however, it might be recommended to go at least up to the specified point to enjoy relaxed 4 hour walking. We took trekking shoes this time, however, it might be OK to use normal jogging as the well maintained trackways.