Mount Cook Reflections – Almost

Today we headed walked up to Sealy Tarns above Mount Cook village for reflection photos of Mount Cook. It was a very pleasant walk, about 3 miles each way and 400m of ascent and we reached the tarns at 10.15am.

The tarns were small puddles of water still with snow at one end; any English Lakeland tarn would easily put them to shame. The only other problems were the wind which meant very poor reflections and clouds which hid the top of Mount Cook all day (except the few hours before we started, it clouded over just as we left).

Sounds like all was lost but not so! The clouds were spectacular – lots of shapely lenticular clouds over other peaks in the valley. Nice light in the valley on and off too. I took 33 images and have maybe 8 images to use with the rest being exposure variations and different clouds for the same view.

In all I spent over 3 hours waiting for Mount Cook to come out of the clouds before calling it a day and descending to the valley for an early beer with our very patient friends Rob and Annie from Boulder, Colorado who have been with us since Sydney. Rob has done most of the driving and carried spare kit for me that my bad back wouldn’t let me carry myself. Jan is carrying some of my kit too.

Mount Cook came out of the clouds at 9pm tonight and looked spectacular (from the bar!) with Alpenglow on the summit snow fields but all around was dark.

Tomorrow we go the Hooker Glacier for some close-up shots of Mount Cook. Fingers crossed we get the sunshine that they forecast for tomorrow morning.