Over one hundred years now across South Canterbury the traveller is greeted with rich pastoral land, shelter belts, green pleasant valleys and rippling crystal clear streams. When he reaches the top of Burkes Pass he is confronted with a landscape as different as it is dramatic. The Mackenzie high country is a vast inland basin, noted not only for its merinos, and tussock but for its lakes, Tekapo, Pukaki, and Ohau and its adjacent mountains and unique flora and funa and snow 'one foot in June or July is worse than two feet in August.'
A pleasant alternative scenic route through the Mackenzie is along the road following the Tekapo Canal, which provides water to Tekapo B power station in Lake Pukaki. Turn left off Highway 8 soon after crossing the Tekapo River bridge. The road rejoins the highway near Irishman Creek Station or you can continue all the way to Lake Pukaki. Not recommended in windy weather or if there is icy road conditions.
On 14 December, 1991 the summit of Mt. Cook collapsed and the peak's altitude was reduced by approximately 10 m. In 1997 the height was determined by photographic measurement to be 3,754 m / 12,316'.
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Samuel Butler described the peak in 1860. "It rose towering in a massy parallelogram, far above all the others. It is well worth any amount of climbing to see. No one can mistake it. The moment it comes into sight the exclamation is, 'That is Mount Cook!' -not 'That must be Mount Cook!' "
The ‘Queen’s Chain’ is a strip of public land normally 20m in width on either side of a qualifying waterway, laid off at the time of first disposal of the land by the Crown. Qualifying waterways have an average bed width of 3m or more at fullest flow.