A cloudy look at Mount Cook

One of the swinging bridges over the raging river.
Me and our cloudy rainy view
The troopers I tramped with, taking a shot of the cloud in front of Mount Cook.


From Lake Tekapo we decided to take a day trip to climb and see NZs largest mountain, Mount Cook, yet another place named after James Cook who discovered most of the Pacific Islands!
It was supposed to be a mostly sunny clear day but it started with me waking up at 6:30am to hear a torrential downpour and then to continue on all day raining. My friends and I were hoping it would change once we got up to the mountain but after waiting around all morning, teaching our Brit friend Ben all about PB and banana sandwiches and watching him eat one we decided it wasn't going to clear so we gave up entertaining ourselves and ventured out. It wasn't too bad just mostly sprinkling but we couldn't even see the cloud covered Mount Cook. We tramped for 3 1/2 hours with the last hour raining quite hard. Came back to the lodge for a well earned coffee with Baileys and to sit by the fireplace and dry out a bit! I have been very lucky, this is the first time the weather has really affected my day and the views so I guess I can't complain. We blamed it on Kelli who has had bad weather and no views on every major hike she's been on, poor girl but she's toa trooper, she's a Canadian who grew up on the Alaska border. I have met more Canadians in the last week here, it's been great. One night there was 10 of us sitting around and 8 were Canadians!