Mt. Cook, Mueller Hut Hike

Here we are - 11 hikers and 2 guides gathered in front of a small mountain lodge in a narrow valley between soaring peaks and glaciers, which are temporarily obscured by a low cloud layer hanging over the valley.  Its cool but not cold, a good temperature for our long hike today.  After 9 days of traveling together this group has had some good laughs and can be boisterous at times, but this morning most of the faces are serious.  Either everyone is dog tired, or they have their game face on.  Either way, everyone is checking their packs before we depart, making sure they have exactly what they need for the next several hours - no more and no less.  The bus ride to the trail head is short but quiet.  We're all in our own heads with our own thoughts.

Today were hiking to Mueller Hut, and we know this is the toughest hike of the trip.  The instructions are brief but simple - enjoy the first 15 relatively flat mins of the trail, because after that it gets very steep very quick.  Sometimes knowing less really is more, I guess.  And off we go.  Over the next few mins we get a few more clues:

7 hours round trip?  Uh, seriously?  What am I getting myself into?

And welcoming us at the end of our first 15 enjoyable minutes, and written 3 steps up, is this:

Come on now.  This is not helpful (although it did end my temptation to count 'em, which was for the best).

So up we went, climbing 1,813 steps.  And Josh wasn't kidding - it was steep.  Take a look at the group starting to spread out on these steps.  If you zoom in, you can see the speck of orange on top of the boulder.  That's Aaron.  He was the first to that point: 

It took us about an hour to get to the top of the steps, to a point that I think was Sealy Tarns.  I actually felt pretty good at this point.  I didn't train for the steps, and I knew they were going to hurt my knee going down, but I thought the 45 mins of steps up on yesterday's Red Tarns hike was tougher than the hour of steps on this hike.  Today I just focused on where I was planting my hiking poles on the steps.  That alone made me climb at a slower but steady pace, allowed me to get a good rhythm going, and gave me something to think about other than 1,800+ stairs.  

Once we reached Sealy Tarns, the low cloud layer had burned off and we were getting some great views into both the Mueller Glacier and the Hooker Glacier.  

But what Josh and that damn step count at the bottom failed to mention is that this was not even halfway.  Maybe just over 1/3rd, at best.

When we were lucky, the first part of the trail looked like this - nice, even stairs:

The second part of the trail looked like this:

And this:

Plus fields of huge boulders.  Almost two flipping hours of that crap.  The higher we went, the more rock there was and the less obvious the trail was.  When there is loose soil on the trail, it was easy to see where most people step.  When it is nothing but rock and a few intermittent metal posts telling you roughly where the trail is supposed to be, it's quite a bit more challenging.  All I could think with each challenging step up was "this is going to be SOOO much worse coming down."  

We took our second break for lunch just 30 mins short of the hut.

During lunch we could hear the many glaciers in this area crack and calve as the sun warmed them.  There was also a steady hum from the sound of countless waterfalls and running water spilling down to the valley and echoing up the mountains.  Rested and refueled, we then set out for our destination.

At long last, Mueller Hut came into view.  Aaron and Chantal celebrate:

My turn to celebrate- I'm on top of the world!!!

In the end, this hike was 7 miles round trip, 3,523 ft of elevation gain (starting at 2,450 ft), and took 7 hours to complete (roughly 3 hrs 45 mins to make the climb up to the hut, with resting time).  I was definitely feeling it when I got to the bottom, but not from the uphill.  I found the uphill part remarkably manageable.  What hurt most was the downhill.  All of the loose rock, uneven and unstable footing for nearly 2 hours had me tense and anxious with nearly every step and made my legs shake uncontrollably when I stopped moving, followed of course by all those stairs which are tough on my knee.  Good news is that we all made it, with only sore muscles amongst us once we got to the bottom. Time to celebrate with happy hour, a farewell toast,  dinner, and of course lots of post-dinner boozing, laughing and sharing memories on our last night together.

Sweet as!