A night at Mueller Hut

The next thing to do was to go to Mueller Hut. It is a 4hr trek up to the hut from the Mount Cook village.


As usual, rain was forecasted and it fell. Nothing new here, so I wasn't really phased. After four years of CONSTANT fucking rain whenever I go in the mountains, why the hell should it bother me now?


Rant aside, we did see a small accident when a girl rushed down a snow slope only to get stopped by some rocks. The impending bruises (to the head) and dislocated shoulder that come with such meetings were in the end solved by a helicopter rescue (which we didn't see, alas). I was nonetheless able to provide them with some paracetamol for the pain, putting to good use the first-aid kit which none of the guys really thought was necessary in the first place. HAH!



Marian saw snow for the first time in ages!


Another inspiring thing was the ranger at Mueller Hut, a 75-year old Brit by the name of Mark. Apparently, he spends all English winters in New Zealand doing jobs like this, minding huts and farms. Every day he goes out of the hut and around the plateau. Inspiring, if i do say so myself. We met some Philipinos who live in New Zealand and milk cows for an existence. They carried a bottle of Jim Beam up to the hut and were very nice to share with everybody. I didn't have it, but I did steal some of their oranges that were supposed to go with it. As usual, pasha from russia was hungry for friends and stalked everybody to death (I think that as geeks, marian and i really do go out a lot - or maybe he doesn't, who knows). Below is mark with some of the philipinos.


Before reaching the hut I twisted my right ankle (the one with 2/3 ligaments) and had to stop to breathe because the pain was very intense. Bandaged it when I reached the hut, but still it gave me trouble for the whole trip (still does). The hut is like a hotel compared to the next ones we will see ... The toilet even has two compartments that require your aim: forward for the liquids, backward for the more solid matters. This is because solid feces do not decompose in alpine environments and have to be flown out.


Some serac fall



We didn't see Mount Cook until the next day, when it showed itself to us in all its splendor. Woke up at 5:30 to see the sunrise but it was very cloudy.


Instead we got this:


We went up to mount Olivier, a very very easy scramble, and the boys were chicken to follow me to the next mountain on the ridge (not so easy scramble), so I didn't go. Ah well ...
I look like a gangsta here


And Marian is soo neat!


Took a picture with Mark


And then started down


Coming down, of course Pasha had to rush the same slope the girl came tumbling down, only he had to film himself descending (he had heard from mark about a guy doing the same thing and how cool that was and I guess he wanted to see for himself). It wasn't cool, it was STUPID, but nonetheless it reminded me of somebody else who would have done the same thing. He is now dead. One of the greatest lessons one should learn is to LEARN from other people's mistakes.

Mount Cook!!




As usual, the rest of the pictures are here.