Mt Cook National Park is my favourite place in all of New Zealand. The alpine area around the Mueller hut, under the glaciers of Mt Sefton, may be the most breathtaking place I’ve ever been.
On the advice of my friend Danny, Ty Zeke and I packed our tent up to the Mueller hut to spend the night, while Kylie Levi and Mikaya stayed in the motorhome at White horse hill campground.
The trail starts with incredible views and only gets better. After a few minutes of flat warmup it starts going up up up.
1100m elevation gain in a 5k trail was a steep grunt for the boys on their first fully weighted trip but they were up for it!
First half was built trail but then it turn to scree and finally some fun rockhopping.
From the hut site there were glaciers in every direction and Mt Cook and Mt Sefton overlooking it all.
The hut was fully booked, but we were actually happy to camp and find our own space.
Except for the flipping keas, super smart very confident birds that would consistently try to rip up our tent just for fun! We had to leave a guard constantly. One time Ty and I came back and Zeke was losing his mind trying to protect our tent from three keas who were absolutely playing him, swooping in and teasing so he had to run around the tent and then their buddy would hop up on the other side and try to get my pack open or start pecking on the tent seams!
Eventually a few well thrown rocks convinced them we meant business and they left us alone and went and ate some German girls tent instead…
We had a lovely hot meal of potatoes, Thai chicken curry and ramen and then set up our beds.
The hut had a guitar so I took the opportunity after 2 months away from playing to sing a few songs before bed.
The next morning we woke before sunrise to an amazing inversion with the valley clouded in fog. Truly heaven on earth.
We climbed to the peak above the hut to watch the sunrise and spent over an hour marvelling at the changing views.
Truly every 5 minutes a new element would present itself. New colours or shadows would alter the vista yet again.
We shared the peak with the hut warden and 2 American girls for a while, enjoying some conversation but also a lot of silence.
When we got back down and packed up our tent before the keas woke up we found that everyone else staying in the hut had already packed up and left! We really thought we would come down to a rowdy sunrise breakfast party but we’re also quite happy to have some space to eat our oatmeal and granola.
I remembered to take some pics of the interior.
And the outside decks. I keep saying it but this place was absolutely mind blowing.
I dragged out our departure as long as I could, playing guitar, drinking coffee and boiling water but finally it was time to eat some lunch and head back down to Kylie and the kids. At this point there was starting to be some day hikers coming up so we let them enjoy the space on their own.
The boys basically ran down the mountain so I hardly got any more pics. It was all I could do to keep up. We made it down in 2 hours and were thankful to have camp already set up when we arrived and to stretch out and read a book while we waited for Kylie and Levi and Mikaya to come back from their hike to the visitor centre.
Levi singing the praises of Lake Pukaki.
Marc and I came to Wanaka 17 years ago when we first came to NZ and puzzling world was definitely a highlight for me. 
