Tallest Peak in NZ, what's up

Surprisingly enough the past weekend was once again filled with awesome adventures that will probably continue making people at home jealous :) yes, I know my life is awesome right now, that's why I choose to blog about it. So after getting completely rained out the previous weekend on the Copland track we actually decided to take weather into account when planning this trip. Once again however our research showed that there was going to be rain basically all of Saturday and Sunday. So being the resourceful people that we are-and pathetic Uni students that we are-we decided to set out on an early Thursday morning to Mt. Cook National Park to catch the nice weather before the rain storms hit. And our decision to leave early proved sooooo worth while. On the drive down we stopped at Lake Tekapo to have lunch and soak in the simply breath taking scenery:

Lake Tekapo -- be jealous... :)

As we continued our drive the views only became even better and when Mt. Cook came into sight we all just freaked out. 

Epic! Tallest mountain in New Zealand, at 3,754meters. I'd love to say we climbed it but that would take about a week and about $5,000... One of these days though..

Upon arrival at Mt. Cook village we immediately set out on the Kea Point track followed by the Sealy Tarns track. In the summer the Sealy Tarns leads up to an 1800m summit along with a hut, but unfortunately for us the snow made it impossible to make it that high. The views from the highest point that we got to were still amazing though. 

On the way up! The glacial lakes are a crazy color due to the glacial silt. (Mt. Cook is in the left)

What a ladies man :)

After some more exploring of the area, and the sad realization that due to one of the suspension bridges being under construction that we would not be able to do another track the next day, we set up camp, had some good food, admired the huge night sky and went to sleep. Or more accurately we froze in our sleeping bags. That night was as cold if not colder than my freezing night of sleep at the trail head of Mt. Somers. Of course, as soon as the sun peeked over the mountains we began to sweat again. We followed two short tracks that morning and one lead us to the Tasman Glacier, the largest glacier in New Zealand. The views here once again took all of us by surprise and left us in awe. We hung out at the look out for quite a while taking everything in. The Tasman Lake created by the glacier was ginormous, for lack of a better word. And huge icebergs floating in the lake seemed small from our viewpoint but after noticing some kayakers in the lake in the distance we understood that these icebergs were like 30x as big as the kayaks. 

Props to Lena and photoshop for creating this amazing panorama :)

We were all on quite a high from the amazing views that we had just experienced during our drive back home. And we were also excited to still have the majority of the weekend to spend in Christchurch. Saturday during the day we headed to Castle Hill to attempt some bouldering and to show Lena the great playground that is Castle Hill :) 

Don't let me fool you, I really have no idea what I'm doing...

Jumping photo fail! haha

And that night we celebrated my birthday with some amazing friends!! Such a great night, we didn't end up going out at all since Christchurch and night life are two words that are rarely heard in the same sentence, but no matter, I had an amazing time. 

Friends are awesome :)