State Highway 80 (SH 80) is a

South Island The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman ...

state highway A state highway, state road, or state route (and the equivalent provincial highway, provincial road, or provincial route) is usually a road that is either ''numbered'' or ''maintained'' by a sub-national state or province. A road numbered by a ...

in New Zealand. Known as ''Mount Cook Road'', it is a tourist road between the settlements of Twizel and

Mount Cook Village Aoraki / Mount Cook, often referred to as Mount Cook Village, is located within New Zealand's Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park at the end of , only south of the summit of the country's highest mountain, also called Aoraki/Mount Cook, in the So ...

. About 55 kilometres in length, it is mostly two lane, with a few single-lane bridges. Tourists travelling between Christchurch and Queenstown often deviate here and travel to New Zealand's highest mountain

Aoraki/Mount Cook Aoraki / Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand. Its height, as of 2014, is listed as . It sits in the Southern Alps, the mountain range that runs the length of the South Island. A popular tourist destination, it is also a favourit ...

Route

Since designation, this is the route SH 80 takes. For the first 31 km of the road, SH 80 runs in a northerly direction parallel with the banks of

Lake Pukaki Lake Pukaki is the largest of three roughly parallel alpine lakes running north–south along the northern edge of the Mackenzie Basin on New Zealand's South Island. The others are Lakes Tekapo and Ohau. All three lakes were formed when the te ...

to the right and the Mackenzie Basin to the left. About 10 kilometres along the road, the basin is superseded by the

Ben Ohau Range Ben Ohau Range is a mountain range in Canterbury Region, South Island, New Zealand. It lies west of Lake Pukaki, at and east of the Dobson river and Lake Ohau. The Ben Ohau range is dominated at the southern end by Ben Ohau Ben Ohau Ran ...

. After a further 20 kilometres, the road passes the head of Lake Pukaki where it changes name to the Tasman River. The highway eventually terminates just east of Mount Cook Village after a further 24 kilometres.

References

External links

New Zealand Transport Agency
80 Transport in Canterbury, New Zealand {{NewZealand-road-stub

Route

See also

References

External links