“The Good, Bad, and the Ugly”

It was a beautiful, CLEAR, morning! Our room at the Aoraki Court Motel looked out to Mount Sefton. The morning light cast an amazing pinkish glow, which Fred photographed even before he had coffee.

Our first hike was Hooker Valley Track. It was rather cold at 8am and I had a record 5 layers of clothing on. The track is extremely well maintained at the bottom and top ends, and a bit rugged and rocky in the middle section. There were very few people on the track at this time.

We were out of visual range, but could smell the cigarette smoke from the group ahead of us as we were between the first and second swingbridges. Fred was like a giddy puppy wanting to get a view of Mount Cook in the morning light, and we raced ahead of them.

After crossing some beautifully made elevated walkways across the Tussock fields, we were surprised to see a 3rd Swingbridge. Is this new? (Further research found that it had been constructed in 2013.)

Another surprise – icebergs in the Hooker Glacier terminal lake!

The views were awesome and we took loads of photos, ate an early lunch, and took more photos.

We headed back down. By now, many people were on the way up. We fetched a geocache at Freda’s Rock and drove down the road to Tasman Valley.

As awesome as Hooker Glacier was, quite the opposite can be said for it’s ugly stepsister, Tasman.

The hike to Tasman View is quite steep and there’s a feeling of accomplishment for getting there. But the glacier and lake are just plain ugly. My apologies to the folks on the TA forum, whose opinions I greatly respect. But I have to be honest here. The icebergs, what it’s famous for, were few and tiny. We also walked to the jetty but there wasn’t much to speak of there either. We did get to see a group loading onto boats for the iceberg tour, and we were so glad we weren’t one of them.

The Adventure Continues>>>