Epic Travel → Asia & the South Pacific → New Zealand → Canterbury → Tasman Glacier View Track

Location: Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park, Canterbury, New Zealand

Time Required: 30 minutes

Distance: 1.85 km/1.15 miles (roundtrip)

Elevation Gain: 80 m/260 feet

Red Tape/Notes: None.

What’s Nearby?: Ball Flats Hike, Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park, Lake Tekapo, Lake Tekapo Peninsula Walkway

This is the one hike everyone does when they come to Mt. Cook. Probably a majority of tourists come here, do this hike, and feel like they’ve “done” Mt. Cook. To be fair, you should really do this if you’re here. An easy trail heads up the hill with occasional stairs, topping out at a large viewing platform at the terminal moraine ridge, overlooking the toe of the Tasman Glacier and the lake its retreat has created, complete with floating icebergs (calved from the glacier of course) during the summer. On the way back down, you can detour by the Blue Lakes, which are no longer blue, since they’re not fed by glacial melt anymore. But if you catch the reflection of the sky in the lakes, they can still look blue, so that maybe counts? It was raining the second time we were here, so the views weren’t as good as the first time (and definitely no blue to be found in the lakes, but it was still worth the minimal effort required.

Epic Travel → Asia & the South Pacific → New Zealand → Canterbury → Tasman Glacier View Track