We took this trip to New Zealand in December 2023…Yes, really!! Why am I only writing about it now? Because better late than never?? Not because I’ve been busy scrolling aimlessly on social media, Sure, let’s go with that! 👍(Seriously, guys, time is precious.. Waste it wisely!)
Mueller Hut is considered one of the most popular overnight hikes on New Zealand’s South Island, but also easily ranks among the most breathtaking alpine stays we’ve ever experienced. Offering sweeping panoramic views of Aoraki/Mount Cook, Mount Sefton, dramatic glaciers, and towering ice cliffs, this overnight hike is an absolute must-do on the South Island.
Every time we travel to a new place, Rajesh tries to get me to do things that could expand my “cultural horizons” (Museums, hikes, anything involving a group of more than two people! In the past Rajesh got me to do a lot of stuff that I may not have otherwise chosen over my favourite activity, “sleeping”). Every time we go hiking, Rajesh is all, “This is the most rewarding thing ever!”
Meanwhile, I’m just praying a venomous snake puts me out of my misery!!
Despite that my sedentary body (which is genetically optimized for naps) doesn’t take well to hiking or any other form of strenuous activity (I’m rather slow and prone to crying, falling and dying, not necessarily in that order), I sometimes go inactive for such long stretches, that my shoes probably think I died. I do look forward to hiking a lot more now which is honestly shocking to everyone, especially me.
Trail Distance & Elevation
This is one of those trails that looks much easier on paper than it is in reality. It is about 5.6kms one-way… but almost all of that distance is straight up a mountain! At some point you start to wonder if this was the route your parents took to go to school!
Unless you’ve booked to stay in the hut overnight (which we highly recommend you do), you’ve then got to turn around and come straight back down again as well. My knees suck at being knees and I’m not good at walking down mountains (or up) so it was probably a good idea to sleep in the hut!
You climb about 1800m over the course of the hike.
Route style: Out-and-back
One-way hiking time: Approximately 4-5 hours
Difficulty: Challenging
Ideal visiting months: December to April
The Hut
The hut offers simple, no-frills lodging with bunk beds, gas stoves, and a shared dining area, perfect for hikers who want to stay overnight and catch both sunset and sunrise over the Southern Alps. It is powered by solar lights! Bookings to stay in Mueller hut have to be made via the Department of Conservation (DOC) website. During peak season you may need to book several months in advance to secure a spot. This is one hut you can’t just rock up to and expect to find a bunk.
Like all backcountry huts in New Zealand, Mueller Hut runs on a shared set of unwritten rules. You have to carry back all your trash with you. You cannot leave anything in the hut.
The hut comes with gas stoves, so you can skip hauling your cooking equipment up the mountain but you’ll still need to bring your own food, and yes, actual pots to cook it in along with cutlery.
I usually have a tendency to make things with no flavor. Newsflash: turns out flavor is a vital part of food, unless you have no sense of taste or smell. My other talents also include taking 5 hours to cook a meal that the recipe says should take only 30 minutes. So, in the interest of everyone’s time…and taste buds, we made the executive decision to skip cooking altogether.. which also meant we didn’t have to bother carrying any actual pots and pans! We packed some fruits, bread, cheese, and hummus making it the healthiest meal I had eaten in a long time. And then I undid the healthiness by eating some potato chips.
There’s no running water in the hut, so you’ll need to carry your own supply. On the bright side, if needed, you can melt snow for cooking. We carried about 2 litres of water per person, which worked well for us.
You will also need to carry a warm, sub-zero sleeping bag during winter nights in an alpine hut and maybe don’t rule out summer either. When we tackled Mueller Hut in December (summer time in New Zealand), the mountains reminded us that they did not care about seasons, greeting us with a generous helping of snow on the trail. It was freezing. In summer.
Look, I loved the snow. Everything was magical and sparkly and I took approximately four hundred pictures. But I also really, really, deeply hate being cold and wet which puts me in an awkward position as someone who keeps voluntarily going to the mountains…maybe I am a bi-polar bear [or a wuss]! I’m not ashamed of being a wuss. A wuss who likes her skin’s temperature to stay fairly constant. Also bears hibernate throughout the coldest months of the year and I can’t think of anything more logical in the entire history of the universe!
There are two drop toilets which are quite some distance from the hut and require quite an effort of walking on the snow to reach. Also there is no running water, so bring TP. Bring hand sanitiser. Bring a therapist if you have one available. The drop toilet experience is humbling and you will descend from that mountain a changed person, with a profound new appreciation for the miracle of indoor plumbing.
Ohh and your hiking boots stay outside, but not outside outside, because leaving them on the deck overnight will freeze them into solid little boot-shaped rocks! Also the Kea will most likely destroy them! For the uninitiated, a kea is a mountain parrot that is essentially a tiny feathered criminal that has personally been wronged by every hiker who has ever lived and is working through it by destroying their belongings. Save your boots, pop them in the boot room!
The hut has two bunkrooms with 14 mattresses each, stacked seven on top and seven below. Which means you will be sleeping very close to a total stranger…! fun! 😐
The Hike
Part 1: Hiking to Sealy Tarns
Rajesh and I parked our car at the White Horse Hill carpark at the crack of dawn. We wanted to start early so we could have multiple snack breaks! Snacks are really important guys, like when I am on the verge of a full mental breakdown, I can just shove snacks into my mouth and boom! Crisis averted! Snacks save lives!
I also hike at the pace of a very relaxed tortoise, so we made sure I had enough buffer time to finish the hike before the sun went down.
When you arrive at the carpark, ignore every instinct to follow the crowd. That cheerful mob is heading for the massively popular Hooker Valley Track, which is wonderful but not where you’re going. The Mueller Hut Track heads west from the carpark, the opposite direction!
Also Rajesh had anxiety the night before (as someone who has professionally occupied that role for her entire life, I found this both offensive and deeply confusing). Unfortunately the anxiety was justified : snow had been reported on Mueller Hut and we obviously did not have crampons nor any of the skills that would make hiking on snow a survivable experience! So we weren’t sure if we would actually be able to do the hike at all! So we popped into the Aoraki/Mount Cook Visitor Centre that morning. All hikers must register their intentions here for safety! We checked the weather conditions and also met a couple of hikers at the visitor center who just finished the hike back down from the hut. They confirmed yes, there was snow, but with decent hiking shoes and poles it was completely manageable and crampons were not, in fact, required for survival. We chose to believe them entirely, mostly because it was exactly what we wanted to hear. Onwards and upwards. Literally!
The trail starts off deceptively pleasant, a relaxed, flat walk across the valley floor. That lasts until you hit the swing bridge, at which point the mountain reveals itself. What follows is a relentless staircase carved into the mountainside that’s named the “Stairway to Heaven,” which sounds lovely until you learn it means 2,200 steep steps going up, and up, and then up some more for roughly 90-120 minutes depending on your pace!
As you climb higher the views just get prettier and prettier but that kind of thing is difficult to appreciate when all that runs through your brain is, “OH MY GAWWWWDDDD!!! HOW MANY MORE STEPS? THE LUNGS DEMAND ANSWERS. AND THE KNEES.”
When I asked Rajesh how much further Sealy Tarns was, he responded “Another 30 minutes!” and then he repeated the same answer after 40 minutes 😐
While Rajesh practically sprinted up the steps as though we weren’t fragile bipedal humans (with bones that break) climbing a very rocky, very unforgiving mountainside, I lagged way behind like a disabled puppy left for the vultures. Not that he actually left me behind, I was just verrryyy verrrrry slow (much like writing this blog post). Thank goodness I am not religious because I’d be pretty mad at whoever signed off on my body design! Terrible build quality. Knees not suitable for mountains! Lungs that make noises that cause other hikers to stop and look around for a dying walrus in distress. Well turns out I’m just a mix of defective genes! Sure, it could be worse, at least all my appendages are present and accounted for and installed in the correct locations. So I just gotta work with what I have! Sigh!
The reward at the top of this particular circle of hell is Sealy Tarns, a gorgeous little mountain lake with sweeping views over the Hooker Valley and Aoraki/Mount Cook, which is so beautiful that you will almost … almost… forgive the steps entirely. We took in the views and ate breakfast at Sealy Tarns, and by breakfast I mean a cold sandwich and potato chips. I can devour a whole bag of chips in just a minute if any company is looking for their next CEO.
Part 2: Sealy Tarns to Mueller Hut
Many day hikers turn back after reaching the Sealy Tarns, beyond this point the trail gets heaps more challenging. If the climb to Sealy Tarns felt tough, there is absolutely no shame in turning back there, the section up to the hut is considerably harder and should not be underestimated.
The carefully constructed steps disappear giving way to a rougher, steeper route marked only by poles, with loose rock underfoot and no clear end in sight.
The next 90 minutes or so is just relentless climbing and scrambling on loose rocks and snow. DEAR LORD!! Now I understand how Frodo and Sam felt when they were climbing through…that place with all the rocks. You saw the movie, right? We were basically them, except without the fate of Middle Earth at stake! Since my body is basically a noodle, every single step required a lot of thinking as I was stepping on rocks at steep angles and trying not to get killed in the process. The good news, as evidenced by the fact that you are reading this, is that I didn’t kill myself! HUZZAH!! Rajesh took pity on my disabled-slug-like pace and very kindly volunteered to take some of the heavier items from my backpack into his! I generously awarded him a certificate of excellence in “voluntary suffering on behalf of another person” that I designed in my head! 👍👍 I don’t think he knows that he received it …It was nonetheless one of the most meaningful awards I have ever given.
After a while I was amazed that my legs could propel my body forward, I was so tired that I may have been delirious! But eventually after what feels like an eternity, the trail levels out onto a rocky plateau and the views open up completely. You’re looking straight across the Mueller Glacier to a long row of snow-capped peaks, all pushing up to around 2500 metres! This is also where you’ll start seeing and hearing avalanches roaring down the other side of the valley, a sound that is equal parts terrifying and magnificent, and will make you feel very small in the best possible way! I was so overwhelmed by the sight of these enormous, beautiful mountains that my face decided that crying was the only logical response! Delirium is bad, you guys!
I stood there watching several avalanches while simultaneously crying and eating a chocolate bar! The joy I felt in that moment was indescribable, but I will try anyway: imagine being submerged in a warm pool of tiny, fluffy kittens just cuddling the shit outta you!(If you’re allergic to cats, also imagine that you’re not allergic to cats. And if you don’t like cats, imagine that you like cats! I appreciate your cooperation!)
After a short walk through the snow, we finally made it. The hut is impossible to miss… it is bright red perched on stilts amongst the rocks, with metal steps leading up to the deck. There’s one last small uphill push to reach it, which feels almost cruel after everything that came before, but then suddenly there it is and it’s all worth it. We were greeted by the hut warden who showed us around and walked us through the house rules, after which we claimed our beds, dropped our bags, and headed straight back outside to sit on the bench and take it all in.
A little piece of history: the current Mueller Hut was opened by Sir Edmund Hillary himself in 2003, after a series of avalanches wiped away its predecessors. The new location was chosen considerably more wisely. The hut sits in the shadow of Mt Ollivier, the first proper mountain that a young Sir Ed ever climbed!
There were a few campsites on the east side of the hut, and one look at them in that cold and wind confirmed that booking a bed inside was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my entire life.
If you still have functioning legs, you can also hike up to Mt Ollivier, it’s only about 500 metres from the hut and takes roughly between 30-60minutes to reach, and the reward is a full 360-degree panorama of the surrounding mountains!
We decided to just stay put and eat our packed lunch of cheese, bread, fruits and hummus which seemed like a perfectly reasonable decision right up until we watched everyone around us cooking hot, steaming, fragrant meals! It was freezing cold and I would have traded almost everything I owned for a single bowl of hot soup. My phone. My hiking poles. Possibly my husband!
We just sat on the porch for hours looking around in disbelief and taking a gazillion pictures! We saw the most incredible sunset (as well as sunrise the next day!) See!!! [violently shoves more photos in your face]
Rajesh also decided to drag my butt out of my warm sleeping bag in the middle of the night to see the milky way arching above Mueller Hut that made the whole freezing, pitch-dark expedition feel entirely justified! I highly recommend you do this!
Descent to carpark
We woke up to watch the sunrise! Slowly, the peaks begin to glow. Not gold, not orange, but something in between that has no name in any language I speak. We stood on the deck in the freezing cold and we did not move and we did not speak because it felt like the kind of thing you should not interrupt. The kind of thing that reminds you how very very lucky you are to witness this!
Unfortunately there was no time to linger over breakfast. Rain was forecast for later that morning, which meant the trail would turn slippery and the snow would go from picturesque to dangerous in a fairly short window, and we still had no crampons. We packed up, ate quickly, and got moving. We also saw paw prints in the snow, the kind that did not belong to anything small and friendly, possibly a snow leopard? The pawprints were personally responsible for a sudden and remarkable improvement in my hiking pace.
Some hikers decided to slide down the snowy sections, this might seem like fun until you remember that sending yourself careening down a mountain can dislodge rocks and send them tumbling onto hikers below! Please don’t do it!
The trip back down was honestly much better. For one, gravity was on my side. Unburdened by a burning sensation in my legs and lungs, my brain was able to form coherent thoughts! Yay! We accomplished something! And burned some calories in the process! And right about then it started to rain! Luckily we had just hit the paved steps at Sealy Tarns, which was an enormous relief, navigating wet rocks and snow in almost zero visibility fog is a whole different kind of terrifying compared to paved wet stairs.I felt bad for being a slow-poke, but Rajesh didn’t seem to mind that much. He was probably afraid that I would slip, fall down and die.
We finally made it to the carpark and looked up! Like whoaaaaaaa!!! Like whaaa….reallyyyyy??….. Like…
…DOUBLE HOLY SHIZZZZZ, did we climb down from up there? I guess so…..wow!
Next we drove to get food and drinks because no hike is complete until u have reached a pub looking feral!
Safety Information
Check the weather : conditions on the mountain can change rapidly and without much warning, and getting caught out above Sealy Tarns in deteriorating weather is a very different adventure from the one you planned.
Pack warm layers and extra food and water: even in summer, you may encounter snow like we did, also it is easy to get lost or get stuck in the hut for days due to bad weather, so carry extra food, water and medicines to be safe.
Tell someone your plans: and carry an emergency beacon. Also dont forget to register your intent at the visitor center!! Look after yourself and each other! <3
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