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Aoraki / Mount Cook
New Zealand's highest peak, the cloud piercer of the Southern Alps
Aoraki / Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand, a steep, heavily glaciated peak of 3,724 metres at the spine of the Southern Alps on the South Island. Its Maori name, Aoraki, means cloud piercer, and in the cosmology of the Ngai Tahu people the mountain is an ancestor turned to stone. Sharp, icy, and prone to violent weather, it is a serious mountaineering objective and the training ground where Edmund Hillary honed the skills he would carry to Everest.
The mountain rises along the Alpine Fault, where the Pacific and Australian plates grind past and into each other, throwing up the Southern Alps with such speed that erosion can barely keep pace. Glaciers drape its flanks - the Tasman, New Zealand's largest, among them - and feed milky, sediment-laden rivers and lakes below. The peak's height is not fixed: in 1991 a massive rockslide carried away the top ten metres of the summit, and later surveys confirmed the mountain had lost height, a vivid reminder of how actively these slopes are eroding.
Climbers first reached the summit in 1894, when three New Zealanders - Tom Fyfe, George Graham, and Jack Clarke - beat a foreign party to the top, a point of national pride. The mountain anchors Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Area, and a settlement of guides and lodges at its foot serves climbers, trampers, and stargazers drawn by some of the darkest skies in the world. Its dual name reflects the partnership between the Crown and Ngai Tahu.