Aoraki / Mount Cook is the highest peak in New Zealand at 12,218 ft.
Aoraki, the Maori version of the mountains’ name, comes from a legend in which the 4 sons of Rakinui, the Sky Father, sail across the empty sea before New Zealand was created. As they are sailing, their boat becomes stranded on a reef and tips onto its side. The boys are forced to crowd onto the side of the boat. They eventually become frozen and are turned to stone by the fierce southern wind. Their canoe became the South Island of New Zealand, while the boys formed the Great Soutern Alps. The tallest of the 4 boys formed the highest peak in the Alps, his name was Aoraki, or ‘Cloud Piercer’.
The name Mount Cook came about with considably less imagination. In 1851, Captain John Lort Stokes named the peak to honour Captain James Cook, who surveyed and circumnavigated the islands but never actually sighted the Peak.
The Southern Alps were also the training grounds for Sir Edmund Hillary, who first climbed the Peak in 1948.
