January 1993
names in high places
On the NZ vacation after meeting MAP on the West Coast riding the Kiwi Experience bus [see: Lake Hawea], we all had the chance to take a helicopter tour to the top of Mt Cook (or very nearly the top). The flight was brief and dramatic. The copter landed on an icefield just below the mountain peak. It was freezing and we were underdressed. We basically paid a lot of money to stand under a tall, beautiful mountain to take a few photos - it was a short, dramatic experience to be sure. The weather at the top was quite changeable and the ticket non-refundable - if we got up there and couldn't land or it was too cloudy to see much, too bad.
The name battles of New Zealand were at their peak during our visit. Kiwi friends Jo and Jamie largely supported the efforts although they did think sometimes the renaming had "gone too far". The indigenous Maori people wanted the original names of many places to be recognized and reinstated. Slowly the names were changing back (although Mt Cook was still Mt Cook when we visited). Finally, most name changes were officially adopted in 1998, approved by the Crown (wow).
Aoraki is the name of a person in the traditions of the Ngāi Tahu iwi; an early name for the South Island is Te Waka o Aoraki (Aoraki's Canoe). In the past many believed it meant "Cloud Piercer", a romantic rendering of the name's components: ao (world, daytime, cloud, etc.) and raki or rangi (day, sky, weather, etc.). Historically, the Māori name has been spelt Aorangi, using the standard Māori form.
The English name of Mount Cook was given to the mountain in 1851 by Captain John Lort Stokes to honour Captain James Cook who surveyed and circumnavigated the islands of New Zealand in 1770. Captain Cook did not sight the mountain during his exploration.
Following the settlement between Ngāi Tahu and the Crown in 1998, the name of the mountain was officially changed from Mount Cook to Aoraki/Mount Cook to incorporate its historic Māori name, Aoraki. As part of the settlement, a number of South Island place names were amended to incorporate their original Māori name. Signifying the importance of Aoraki/Mount Cook, it is the only one of these names where the Māori name precedes the English. Under the settlement the Crown agreed to return title to Aoraki/Mount Cook to Ngāi Tahu, who would then formally gift it back to the nation. Neither transfer has yet occurred; Ngāi Tahu can decide when this will happen.
(Wikipedia)
Note: Ngāi Tahu is the principal Māori tribe of the South Island.
On our big round-the-world tour a few years earlier we had trekked to Muktinath, Nepal at the start of our walk in the Himalayas. Muktinath was at 3,800m and the height of Aoraki was 3724m. It was hard for us to get our heads around how high we had WALKED and that elevation was higher than many mountain peaks we visited in the years to come. Because New Zealand was a land of trekking, our conversations often went back to that wonderful adventure we had in Nepal. We told MAP repeatedly he just HAD TO go trekking in Nepal.
Our 5 minutes below the peak finished with obligatory photos taken - we were freezing anyway. We headed back down to Fox Glacier to continue the bus ride to Queenstown.
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