Mount John in the snow - Tepako

The Hike

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much of the hike. While Lake Tekapo is quite beautiful, Mt John wasn’t overly exciting after just having hiked around the Aoraki area.

But then we woke up and it was snowing. And not just a tiny bit of snow, but big fat snow flakes that stayed on the ground and made everything white. Beautiful & exciting!

So we went - starting the ascent along the sheltered woods. However, once we got out of the woods at the top close to the Observatory, we were greeted by an epic plane of … white… I assume the view must be really nice on a sunny day, but we couldn’t really see anything - barely the next marker on the track.

Luckily, the markers were placed so it was reasonably possible to follow the makers up on the Mountain. Even in almost knee-high snow.I reckon another 4h of that kind of snow, and the markers would have been gone in places :) And since we were the first people to do the hike that day, there were no tracks or anything else to follow.

Anyway - we made it almost across the mountain until we saw some other people (doing the hike in the opposite direction).

In the end, this was a great (and safe) way to train a bit on snow hiking and navigation in really bad weather. The road and town were never far away, there were no sudden drops or avalances to worry about. I wouldn’t wanna try to do this up on Aoraki!

High Points

Snow. Snow. Snow. Like the wet weather hike at Aoraki Hooker Valley, when the going gets tough, truly great memories get made.

Low Points

It was a bit cold and would have been nice to see some of the lake and surrounding areas.