On New Year's Day we woke up to glorious sunshine again and after an early breakfast drove to Mount Cook (also known as Aoraki) mountain village (see photo) to check the weather at the Visitors' Centre. The next two days forecast really good weather. We started the trail up to the Mueller Hut, which takes you up to the main ridge above Mueller Glacier. It takes 3.5 hours to get to and walkers can overnight and walk back down the following day. The first stage of the walk is hard going, with a lot of large steps cut into the rock and I found it quite tough, especially since I had not done much exercise for the last 6 weeks and the sun beating down was fierce. At the halfway point at Selwyn Tarns, we had a wonderful view of the Mueller Glacier, the Hooker Glacier, Mount Cook and the surrounding peaks of the Main Divide (see photo).
There are over 140 peaks over 2000m high in the Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park, which lies in the Mackenzie Basin. Mount Cook is the highest at 3754m and is where the late Sir Edmund Hillary developed his climbing skills. The Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park is a World Heritage site with over 70,000 hectares of alpine scenery. The Mackenzie is also home to the Tasman Glacier, the longest in the southern hemisphere (although we did not get views of this).
On the second part of the trail there are no large steps but a lot of loose rock and scree and we had to make the final ascent to the ridge through melting snow. By this point most of the group had abandoned the walk due to exhaustion. I made it up to the ridge where there were views of a glacier at another mountain (Mount Stewart (see photo)) but as we were short for time and I couldn't face the 20 or so minute scramble to the mountain hut, I decided to head back down. A good job really, as I really suffered with the steps downhill and my legs felt like jelly! I also felt quite rough, as we had marched up the mountain with not many stops (including food stops). It was a really tough first day walk, but it is known as New Zealand's steepest hiking trail and it is quite common to have bad weather in that area, so the Rimu trip usually does more sedate walks.
Some of the group who headed back down earlier went to the cafe at Mount Cook village and saw a number of people and police milling around. About 9.30am in the day, a female climber was roped to her guide, some ice fell and knocked the guide down the mountain. He was airlifted to hospital but died of his injuries. I think he was a well known local guide. The area around Mount Cook is notorious for accidents. I don't think I will ever have the guts to do any mountain climbing for the simple reason that you never know how what the conditions will be.
We had another night at Braemar Station (see photo) and salmon for dinner which our guides bought from the local fish farm. It was delicious.
There are over 140 peaks over 2000m high in the Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park, which lies in the Mackenzie Basin. Mount Cook is the highest at 3754m and is where the late Sir Edmund Hillary developed his climbing skills. The Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park is a World Heritage site with over 70,000 hectares of alpine scenery. The Mackenzie is also home to the Tasman Glacier, the longest in the southern hemisphere (although we did not get views of this).
On the second part of the trail there are no large steps but a lot of loose rock and scree and we had to make the final ascent to the ridge through melting snow. By this point most of the group had abandoned the walk due to exhaustion. I made it up to the ridge where there were views of a glacier at another mountain (Mount Stewart (see photo)) but as we were short for time and I couldn't face the 20 or so minute scramble to the mountain hut, I decided to head back down. A good job really, as I really suffered with the steps downhill and my legs felt like jelly! I also felt quite rough, as we had marched up the mountain with not many stops (including food stops). It was a really tough first day walk, but it is known as New Zealand's steepest hiking trail and it is quite common to have bad weather in that area, so the Rimu trip usually does more sedate walks.
Some of the group who headed back down earlier went to the cafe at Mount Cook village and saw a number of people and police milling around. About 9.30am in the day, a female climber was roped to her guide, some ice fell and knocked the guide down the mountain. He was airlifted to hospital but died of his injuries. I think he was a well known local guide. The area around Mount Cook is notorious for accidents. I don't think I will ever have the guts to do any mountain climbing for the simple reason that you never know how what the conditions will be.
We had another night at Braemar Station (see photo) and salmon for dinner which our guides bought from the local fish farm. It was delicious.
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