At the start of the walk we passed the Alpine monument, which had been erected as a memorial to all those who had lost theirs lives on the surrounding mountains. It was quite sad reading the various plaques and also realizing how young some of the people had been who had lost their lives whilst trying to conquer the various peaks. We then carried on and the views were just stunning, it was quite reminiscent of Switzerland but definitely had its own charm. What was also quite alarming was the number of rumbles from the surrounding mountains. There had been a number of signs warning of avalanches but we didn’t really think much of it until we heard some alarming noises coming from the tops of the mountains! Brushing this noises aside we carried on and the views were just getting better and better! Needless to say it took me an age to sort through the numerous photos we took on route! We had to cross a couple of suspension bridges which weren’t too scary and after passing the second one we turned a

corner and were treated to a picture perfect view of Mount Cook. The leaflet was right, it was a lovely gentle walk and we were definitely in high spirits and couldn’t believe our luck to have such a beautiful sunny day! It took us a good hour and a half to reach the start of the Hooker lake. The Hooker Glacier was at the bottom end of the lake and was quite difficult to see due to the all of the debris that covered it! To our amazement we saw icebergs on the lake, we couldn’t believe it, we had honestly thought that the first time we would see icebergs would be in Antarctica but no, we were treated to them right here! We decided to have a sit down and chill for a short time and just take in the views and just after we’d sat down we heard to most almighty rumble and movement of snow, there had obviously been an avalanche pretty close by! The noise was incredible, everybody jumped and was looking around but there wasn’t really anything to see, which we were pretty glad about! Through the zoom lens