Mueller Hut Hike

Day 171 (December 16, 2018) - Mueller Hut Hike, South Island, New Zealand

It's pretty hard to go wrong when selecting a hike in New Zealand. You could pretty much randomly pick any hike and be impressed with the scenery. But when a particular hike has been called one of the best in New Zealand, you take notice and expect to see something pretty spectacular. We had read that the Mueller Hut hike was one of the best in New Zealand, and it was more amazing than we imagined. We lucked out and had some really great weather, so the scenery was absolutely breathtaking. 

View of the valley and mountains during our hike. The reflective pools are seen on the Sealy Tarns track, which is a short detour from the Mueller Hut track.

The hike starts from a town called Mt. Cook Village. The town is near Mt. Cook, which is the highest mountain in New Zealand at 3724 meters (12,217 feet). We stayed at the White Horse Hill Campground the night before our hike, and we had some pretty great views. The campground was extremely crowded with people, but it had some very nice facilities, including a cooking shelter, drinking water, and bathrooms (no shower though).

The view from our tent in White Horse Campground

White Horse Hill Campground. It was pretty crowded.

The hike itself wasn't all that long - it's only about 3.5 hours from the bottom to the hut - but it is quite steep uphill. About half of the trail was very well-maintained and had stairs, making that portion of the hike relatively easy. But once the stairs ended, you had to scramble up a rock/boulder and dirt trail. This was a bit more strenuous, but still quite manageable. The latter portion of the trail was covered in snow, but a well-worn path by previous hikers made it easy to navigate, although the compacted snow was a bit slippery. 

Mark scrambling up the rocky trail

Mark on one of the snowy areas of the trail

The last portion of the hike was on relatively flat ground, but it was covered in snow. You can see the red hut in the background in the photo below. From the hut we had some pretty spectacular views.

Last portion of the hike up to the hut, which you can see in the background

Mueller Hut

We opted to stay in the hut overnight so we could spend the evening and morning enjoying the view. However, many people did this hike as a day hike. As mentioned before, the hike up is about 3.5 hours, and the hike back down took us only about 1.5 hours, so completing this hike in one day would be quite easy. But we were very glad we stayed so we could take in the views. It also let us listen to and watch constant small avalanches that were happening in the mountains across the valley.

Taken from the balcony of the hut

Panorama of the view from the hut balcony

One of the small avalanches

Despite all the snow, it was actually quite warm during the day with the sun out. At night it got cold and windy, but the inside of the hut stayed quite warm, even without a fire going (most huts have stoves to keep the hut warm, but Mueller Hut had no stove, probably because it would be difficult to get firewood up to the hut).

There are actually a ton of glaciers in this area of New Zealand. It was a little difficult to pick out the glacier at first because it was black, covered in rocks/rubble. The one we could see on the Mueller hike was aptly named the Mueller Glacier.

Mueller Glacier

We also saw some wildlife at the hut. There was a kea that visited the hut and stayed on the railings for a good 30+ minutes while everyone took pictures. The kea apparently is the world's only alpine parrot and is supposedly a very smart bird. We were warned they can terrorize you, your campsite, and your belongings, but luckily we didn't have any bad run-ins with this kea.

A kea visited the Mueller Hut, staying for a while to have its picture taken

The next morning we woke up quite early and got a very early start. I think we were hiking down the mountain by about 6AM. We had a big day ahead of us, since we had to hike to our car (about 1.5 hours) and then drive 4 hours to Christchurch to return our rental car and then catch a flight at 7PM to Wellington. The snow had frozen over, so we were a bit worried about safely making it down the mountain, but it turned out to be fine. Only the surface of the snow was icy, so our boots crunched through the crust and had good traction. The skies were very clear in the morning, so we got to see the scenery in the early morning light, which was another benefit of staying the night.

The mountain view in the sunrise

View on the way back down the mountain. You can see Mt. Cook in the distance - the pointy snow-capped mountain.

We were really glad we decided to do the Mueller Hut hike, and we got really lucky with the weather. Some friends we met New Zealand ended up doing the hike a few weeks later and they were basically in a cloud the entire hike. 

Our drive to Christchurch had some pretty good scenery as well. The picture below was taken about 45 minutes after leaving Mt. Cook Village, looking back over the lake towards Mt. Cook (which is the snow-capped mountain left of center). We made it back to Christchurch with plenty of time to spare to catch our flight to Wellington.

Mt. Cook seen over Lake Pukaki