This weekend was supposed to be a pretty relaxed one, with my flat mates and I just hanging around Ilam and watching movies but of course that didn't end up being the case. We're in New Zealand after all! Why wouldn't we go on an adventure? So, we did! Ali and I decided to go on a tramping trip (at 2 in the morning) to Mt. Cook National Park with our other flat mate Alyssa, and two guys that we know...Chris and Chris haha We had heard it was a pretty intense tramp so Ali and I were keen on sticking together and going slow. I'm definitely not a tramper so I was a little bit nervous.
We left at 8 am on Saturday and jammed out to NSYNC and BSB for a lot of the road trip. I'm sure the boys loved it. It took us about 4 hours to get there and we started up the track at 1 o'clock or so. There was no room in Mueller's Hut, the hut we were hiking too, so we brought along a tent. We knew there was going to be snow up there so we were unsure of how it was going to all turn out. The lady described the hike as "going up a stair master for 5 hours straight". Turns out that is exactly what it was like.
whole track was only 5k's but it took us a little over four hours to do it all! We had to stop quite a bit to catch our breath. The first half was basically going up stairs, with the last half going up the side of a mountain covered in snow and ice...perfect combination for slipping and falling. Which I almost did multiple times. I felt so intense! haha I had never done anything like this in my life. We were going up so high and the views were amazing! It was honestly the best weather we could ask for. Not a cloud in the sky and clear as all get out. Apparently it's the best weather they've had in a while. We got extremely lucky. The national park is so beautiful! We got up to the hut at around 5 o'clock, which by the way is just surrounded by mountains and is the fifth one they've built there because avalanches have knocked the other ones down! Fighting the sun going down, the guys went out to set up the tent while the girls cooked dinner, consisting of chicken, veggies and pasta. We were actually quite proud of how well it turned out! We played cards for as long as possible in the hut before we ventured out in the cold to sleep in our tent. I had a 12 degree (celsius) sleeping back which was not warm enough at all for this weather so I layered up and slept in the way middle of everybody. There were five of us in a 3 person tent, which was fine by us! I'm not sure how much I slept but I survived the night without getting hypothermia so I'd call the night a success. We got up, made oatmeal for breakfast and went to go the summit of Mount Olivia. It was a little tricky getting up because we were climbing over rocks with a bunch of snow and ice but once we got up there the view was well worth the trek!
was a gorgeous view and we took multiple photo shoots haha I was so happy I went because I would've been so bummed to see the pictures afterwards. Unfortunately, Alyssa busted up her MCL...she tore it awhile ago and so she re-injured it. She was a trooper though and hiked down the mountain while her knee was super swollen. This guy that we met who has climbed Mt. Cook (he tore his achilles in the process) and Mt. Kilimanjaro gave her some super good pain killers which helped. For some reason I had this burst of energy and booked it down the mountain and we left at around 5:30 or so and headed home!
It was a quick trip but I had a blast! We lucked out on weather, the group was a blast and we saw some amazing views. New Zealand has been good to me:)
No comments:
Post a Comment