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This is Aoraki Mount Cook Village, a small
settlement at the very end of the road,

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with the Southern Alps
rising on almost every side.

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From here, we're heading
up the Hooker Valley,

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towards the highest
mountain in New Zealand.

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Notice how wide and flat
the valley floor is.

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That shape is the work of ice.

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Glaciers once filled this valley from
side to side, and as they moved,

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they ground it into a broad U, very
different from the narrow V a river cuts.

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The golden tussock has simply grown
back over what the ice left behind.

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As we turn up the Hooker Valley,
the snow comes into view.

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Aoraki sits somewhere at the head of this
valley, hidden behind today's cloud.

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Its name is often translated as "cloud
piercer", which feels about right.

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For Ngāi Tahu, Aoraki is an ancestor.

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The story goes that Aoraki
and his brothers were

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at sea when their canoe
ran aground and tipped.

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They climbed up onto its high side, and
the cold south wind turned them to stone.

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The canoe became the South Island, and
Aoraki, the tallest, became its highest peak.

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Climbers have been coming up this
valley for well over a century.

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The first to stand on the summit, on
Christmas Day 1894, came this way.

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Later, a young Edmund
Hillary sharpened his

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skills on these same peaks,
years before Everest.

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Off to the left, the snowfields around
Mount Sefton are starting to fill the view.

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We'll see much more of
them from the trail.

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Up ahead, the road runs
out at White Horse Hill.

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There's a campsite here, run by
the Department of Conservation,

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and from here the only way
further up the valley is on foot.

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The hill itself is a moraine, a long
ridge of rubble the Mueller Glacier

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pushed here a few hundred years ago,
when the ice reached its furthest point.

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Since then, it's been
retreating up the valley.

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Near the start of the track,
there's a small memorial

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to the climbers who never came
back from these mountains.

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Now we're on foot.

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The Hooker Valley Track
follows the river for

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about five kilometres,
towards the mountains.

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It's mostly flat, and it's one of
the best-loved walks in the country.

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And there it is. Mueller
Lake, and below it,

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the first of three swing bridges
across the Hooker River.

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That milky blue is glacial
flour, rock ground so fine by

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the ice that it hangs in the
water and catches the light.

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Not so long ago, this whole
basin was full of ice.

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The lake is simply what
the glacier left behind.

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Across the water is Mount Sefton, one of
the highest mountains in New Zealand,

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with its ice spilling down
towards the valley floor.

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Listen, and you can hear the river working
its way through the boulders below.

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The track carries on from here to Hooker
Lake, where icebergs drift in summer.

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For today, though, we turn around
and head back down the valley,

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with the mountains behind us now.

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All that water is still
on its way somewhere.

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It runs down the Hooker River into
the Tasman, and on to Lake Pukaki,

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carrying a little more of
these mountains with it.

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And for a little while, there's
really nothing more to explain.

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Hooker Lake, at the end of this track,
barely existed a generation ago.

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The lake we know today began forming in
the early 1980s as the glacier retreated.

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Here, the landscape changes
within a single lifetime.

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Come back in a generation, and this
view will look different again.

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These mountains were here long before
us, and they'll be here long after.

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Thanks for coming along.

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I'll see you on the next road.