(2015/02/11-12) …as you already can guess, brrr this night was also cold and it wasn’t necessary to set an alarm clock to get up early and get my permission for the overnight at the DOC info centre in Village Mount Cook. After at good warming coffee, a short visit at the DOC , on the way back to the White Horse Campground where the trail starts, the mountains shined a definitely good morning back. Some people told me that this track gonna burn each hiker, because it goes up with almost no shade and earlier you can get up, less it burns you. I choose the big backpack, because it’s most practicable and fits best for carrying stuff and has a camelback inside. The trail started at about 700m to the Mueller Hut in 1800m and was given with 3,5 hours, which seemed to me very easy and short and the distance with 5,2km not so far. To have a bit more exercise the way up i packed my backpack with a bit more and left some canned food in the car. When i get up there i will make me a proper dinner and have a bit of wine. You have to note, that every gram you bring up there, you have to bring down again. To be covered if they rain out of water, i choose to bring my own up, to watch dishes, enough for drinking up and down. Even a bottle of beer for my dinner, a canned food for breakfast, 3l of vine, salt, pepper, herbs..etc. I had no option to weight it, but i guess it was about 20kg. At 9.30am i started the way up and the morning sun let the glacier in front shine the snow so bright. But what was that? Stairs? Stairs! The whole Sealy Tarns (fist part of the hike) is totally prepared with stairs. Some stairs are usually somewhere on a track, but why here, but why so many? The sun was already brutal burning down and my burner hat did it’s job perfect to prevent that my head got burned. Usually the easiest an mountain up, is going in serpentines from left to right, less steep and more meters. Somebody had here the great idea to do exactly the opposite. Almost straight the mountain up, using stairs, some of them about very steep and then combined with an height of 30cm each stair. For me with my +20kg backpack more the stairway to hell 🙂 ähm….heaven. I haven’t counted the number of stairs and i didn’t wanted to know that, but i was lucky that i made the first part. Some hikers on the way down said, that they are only on the first part and after that, no more stairs. The first part was given with 1,5 hours and i took 2hours to get up and i was really exhausted, near every 10 minutes a break for me and my legs. It was a feeling like the hike on Mauna Loa, but with less altitude and same exhausting. After a short break at small lake to collect more energy for the second part, the way continued without steps. Lucky? You might think, but the same guy who made the track, did obviously the second part too, without any stairs. It went also almost straight up, with a bit more curves and almost in winter rock fall areas. Now i wished that i would had stairs again :-). Some parts where so steep that i crawled on four the stones up. With the heavy backpack, wasn’t that an easy hike. After reaching ridge, the massive ice walls welcomed me with some avalanches and sound like a thunder as the ice crashed down the steep rocks. Some paraglider choose the better option, by air, to get down again, instead of the millions of stairs back down. About 30 minutes later and a few meters walking over snow i reached the hut after a bit less of 4,5h. Totally exhausted i took my shoes off and joined a place on the benches to watch the natures and their ice avalanches going down. Some Kea’s joined the us on the roof of the hut and the people told us to bring our shoes into a save place, because they love to eat rubber. At the beginning of the later afternoon all the day hikers left the hut and it got very quite and nice on the hut. Only a big hiking group from New Zealand and a handful of regular tourists stayed up there. For dinner almost everybody had canned, prepared or dry food with it and i was the only one who cooked fresh up there. You should have seen their eyes while i was cooking and how they soaked up the smell with their noses. They where happy that i made more and some of them could got one or two spoons for tasting. After the dinner competition which i won, it was time for the sunset and to see Mount Cook getting pink. It wasn’t easy to get the pictures, because most time i choose my eyes instead of the camera to see that beautiful happening. The rest of the night i used to write and prepare some new blog posts and broke my new external hard disk, because it fell out of my backpack (30cm) to the wooden floor. Usually this shouldn’t be a problem, because it was powered off, but in my case the hard disk was totally gone! DOH! On the next morning, after my breakfast, the hiking group of NZ went further up to an guided tour over the snow and glacier while i had to think about my way down. Oh no, the way down! Where is my paraglider? The stairs of hell on the way down. Most of my heavy part where liquids which i used mostly and some spare water litres i donated the sink. Before heading down, i also went the last time to the toilettes of doom (the name was given by the NZ hiking group, it smelled so bad in there). They have an separation system, so that they only have to fly down the solid waste. Sadly no water was helping in there, and a annoying smell kept the time you being in there as short as possible. Uh, with about 10kg less in the backpack, the way down was more easier but still difficult, step by step, ouch, the knees. I could already imagine what will happened tomorrow. At noon i reached the bottom and signed my self out in the DOC and drove to the few kilometres away Tasman Glacier which ended in own lake. The day ended with and proper self-made dinner and a beer at the Lake Hawea new Queenstown/Arrowtown…
Burn and travel around the world