Mountain · New Zealand
Aoraki / Mount Cook
Aoraki / Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand, and in 1991 a huge rock avalanche tore its summit away and made it shorter. It has kept both names since 1998.
Picture credit: W. Bulach (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Krzysztof Golik (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Aoraki / Mount Cook?
Aoraki / Mount Cook is part of the Southern Alps (Kā Tiritiri o te Moana).
You will find it in: New Zealand.
Summit: 43.595° S, 170.142° E
The story behind it
On 14 December 1991 something like 12 to 14 million cubic metres of rock and ice broke off the north side and roared down onto the Tasman Glacier. The summit lost about 10 metres straight away, and over the next twenty years wind and sun wore the thin ice ridge down further. When surveyors from GNS Science and the University of Otago carried GPS gear to the top in 2013, they measured 3 724 metres, roughly 30 metres lower than before the collapse. Sources still disagree: the new figure of 3 724 metres is now standard, but some reference works, including Britannica, still print the older 3 754 metres. The mountain has three tops in a row, the Low Peak at 3 593 metres, the Middle Peak at 3 717 metres and the High Peak, and beside it flows the Tasman Glacier, New Zealand's longest at about 23 kilometres. For Ngāi Tahu, Aoraki is the most sacred of ancestors: in their story he was a boy whose canoe ran aground, and he and his brothers turned to stone and became the Southern Alps. Tom Fyfe, George Graham and Jack Clarke stood on the High Peak on Christmas Day 1894.
Find it on the globe
Aoraki / Mount Cook is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How high is Aoraki / Mount Cook?
Since the 2013 survey the accepted figure is 3 724 metres, which makes it the highest mountain in New Zealand. Before the 1991 rock avalanche it was about 30 metres higher.
Where is Aoraki / Mount Cook?
On the South Island of New Zealand, in the Southern Alps, inside Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park, which was created in 1953. The Tasman Glacier runs along its eastern side.
Why does the mountain have two names?
Aoraki is the Māori name used by the Ngāi Tahu iwi, and Mount Cook the English one. The double name became official through the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act of 1998, and Aoraki is written first.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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