Mount Cook High Country · part 2

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Photo stop near Wanaka

   Planning note

   Photo stop near Wanaka is where the day begins. Next is Queenstown / South Island return.

2. 2. Queenstown / South Island return

   Clyde is a small, handsome town on the Clutha River in Central Otago, and it lies in one of the driest and sunniest parts of New Zealand, where schist hills run in smooth brown folds under a huge sky. The old gold-rush town of the 1860s survives in its main street, with stone buildings, cafes and a historic hotel, and the Clyde Dam, completed in the early 1990s, now holds back the waters of Lake Dunstan to the north. It was a major engineering project and a controversial one, and the old Cromwell town was partly drowned in the process.

   Read the complete Queenstown / South Island return write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Queenstown / South Island return comes up about 111 km into the recorded legs. Next is Food stop near Kingston.

3. 3. Food stop near Kingston

   Planning note

   A break here. Next is Back to Mount Cook.

4. 4. Back to Mount Cook

   Aoraki is the Māori name for New Zealand's highest mountain, and it matters. In Ngāi Tahu tradition, Aoraki and his brothers were sons of the sky who came down in a canoe, which ran aground and turned to stone; the canoe became the South Island, and the brothers became the peaks of the Southern Alps, with Aoraki the tallest. Mount Cook, the English name, honours the navigator James Cook, who never actually saw it up close. The summit stands at about 3,724 metres.

   Read the complete Mount Cook write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back to Mount Cook closes the day.