Aoraki/Mount Cook: The Cloud Piercer

Kia tuohu koe me he mauka teitei, ko Aoraki anake 

– If you must bow your head, then let it be to the lofty mountain, Aoraki

Aoraki/Mount Cook is one of New Zealand's most iconic landmarks. Sitting in New Zealand's Southern Alps, which straddles the length of the South Island, it is the highest mountain in New Zealand, towering 3,724m over the Pacific Ocean immediately to its west. Due to its altitude and southerly latitude, Aoraki maintains a permanent snowcap. Dozens of named glaciers run down the slopes of the mountain, including New Zealand's longest, the 27km long Tasman Glacier. Aoraki along with the rest of the Southern Alps were formed by tectonic uplifting and pressure when the Pacific and Indo-Australian plates collided 25 million years ago in an event that began the Kaikoura orogeny. This process has accelerated in the past 2 million years as the Pacific Plate continues to subduct under the Indo-Australian plate, at a rate of 50mm per year. As a result, New Zealand's South Island is seismically active, and the Southern Alps are continuing to grow at a rapid rate: Aoraki's annual uplift is estimated at 5-10mm a year. 

Aoraki and Māori Sacred Mountains

Aoraki from the Hooker Valley Track.

New Zealand was one of the final frontiers of the Polynesian colonization of the Pacific, being settled as late as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. As soon as the Polynesians who became the Māori became acquainted with their new homeland, the natural features of their surrounding landscapes were identified as having spiritual potency, as well as being signifiers of tribal identity. Mountains came to assume a particularly important role in Māori society, as the frozen remains of their mythical ancestors, as symbols of identity, and as places of spiritual and political power. Which is why whenever Māori from different places gather, they introduce themselves with a formulaic speech (mihimihi) which starts with "my [sacred] mountain is such and such" before going on to list their river or lake, their tribe, sub-tribe, chief, marae (communal sacred place) and finally their name, though modern Maoris have tended to modify this in all sorts of ways. Regardless, the mountain always takes precedence in this oral hierarchy. Here is an example of one such mihimihi by Pounamu carver Andrew McGregor: 

Ko Aoraki te Maunga/ Aoraki is the mountain

Ko Waiau te Awa/ Waiau is the river

Ko Tākitimu me Uruao te Waka/ Takitimu and Uruao were the canoes

Ko Tahu Pōtiki te Whare/ Tahu Pōtiki is the house

Ko Te Rau Aroha te Marae/ Te Rau Aroha is the marae

Ko Te Ara a Kewa te Moana/ Te Ara a Kewa (the Foveaux Strait) is the sea/lake

Ko Ngāi Tahu te Iwi/  Ngāi Tahu are the people

Ko Andrew McGregor ahau/ The name is Andrew McGregor

Aoraki (right) and Mt Tasman from Lake Matheson, South Westland NZ.

Nevertheless, of the myriad sacred mountains revered by the Māori, none are more hallowed than Aoraki. After the Māori had colonized New Zealand in the 1300s, some groups began to identify the mountain as the petrified remains of their supreme ancestors. There are a menagerie of folk stories surrounding Aoraki, but the most influential ones are those maintained by the Ngāi Tahu, the iwi (tribal confederation) of the South Island, who hold the mountain as supremely sacred. According to legend, some sons of the Sky Father Rakinui, which included Aoraki (cloud in the sky), descended from the heavens in a canoe to visit the Earth Mother Papatūānuku who took the form of a huge continent known as Hawaiki (cognate with Hawaii, named after the divine homeland of the Polynesians, and applied to another colony by another group of Polynesians who became the Hawaiians). After greeting her, they set off on a voyage of exploration to the south seas. When their enterprise failed and they attempted to return home, the karaika (prayer) which should have lifted the waka (canoe) back to the heavens failed, and the canoe came crashing back down onto the ocean, capsizing. The wreckage of the canoe became the South Island, and the brothers, who scrambled up the back of the canoe to avoid drowning froze into the Southern Alps, the eldest brother Aoraki becoming the eponymous mountain. It is on the basis of this myth that some Māori call the South Island Te Waka o Aoraki (the canoe of Aoraki). 

Mythic representation of the South Island as a waka and its mountains as the petrified remains of Rakinui's divine sons.

Woodcarving of Aoraki and his brothers, Aoraki/Mount Cook Visitors Centre.

In the earliest days of Maori settlement, there is evidence that tangata whenua (generic term for the Māori) visited the high country around Mackenzie Country on a seasonal basis for hunting. Since Aoraki towers dramatically over the Mackenzie Country landscape, it is no surprise at all that they started imbuing it with mystical qualities. As a tapu (sacred place), Aoraki's mauri (life force) is seen as the supreme binding agent that unites all physical and spiritual matter, generating and upholding all life. Ngāi Tahu believe that their association with the mountain provides vitality to their culture and mana (sacred power) to their status as tangata whenua, people of the land. As such, even the snow/glacial meltwaters of Aoraki are considered sacred, and the mountain mist is the cloak of the ancestor deity Aoraki. These are thought to symbolize his mana, that is beyond the influence of mortals.

European Settlement to the Present

Mt. Cook, 1884, New Zealand, by Charles Decimus Barraud.

Aoraki was possibly sighted by the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman in December 1642 when he sighted a "large land, uplifted high" off the coast of Punakaiki. The first Europeans to venture into the Aoraki region arrived centuries later in the 1800s. These were run-holders looking for grazing land, geologists and surveyors exploring the new country, and painters and poets who romanticized its spectacular landscape. The European name for Aoraki, Mount Cook, named for Captain James Cook, was conferred on the mountain in 1851 by the surveyor John Lort Stokes, just nine years after the British colonization of New Zealand.

    Since the end of the nineteenth century, when the sport of mountaineering exploded into the mainstream, myriads of mountain athletes have been attracted by the rare challenge of Aoraki's dramatic relief. The first ascent took place on 25 December 1894, achieved by New Zealanders Tom Fyfe, John Clarke and George Graham via the North Ridge route from the Hooker Valley. Aoraki was famously one of the favourite training grounds of Everest first-summiter Edmund Hillary.

    Aoraki has also been a tourist hotspot since at least 1884 with the construction of the Hermitage Hotel. In the same year, guiding services were advertised for the first time in a local newspaper, which offered guided walks around the then-very accessible Tasman Glacier, an activity than remained popular until the mid-1950s when climate change-induced glacial thinning made it too dangerous to continue. With the escalation of mountain and glacier tourism and a need to conserve the natural landscape and its ecosystems, the New Zealand government designated Aoraki/Mount Cook and its surrounding valleys and glaciers as a national park in 1953, before later obtaining UNESCO heritage site status in 1990. Today, almost 1 million of New Zealand's 2.5 million annual visitors visit Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. The severe environmental stresses on Aoraki as a result of climate change and increasing tourism continue to pose conservational problems for park managers. Glacial retreat continues on the most sacred of Māori mountains, and overreliance on aircraft to access the mountain and its glaciers in response to shrinking snow and ice volumes has proven to be an inconclusive and contentious solution.

Aerial from the south.

Aoraki from Seealy Tarns Viewpoint.

Aoraki from Hooker Lake.

Aoraki from Lake Pukaki.