My favourite weekend

On the weekend in between the Queenstown Marathon and Luxmore Grunt I decided a nice taper activity would be to complete Mueller hut.

None of this went to plan.

On Thursday I woke up to pain in my knee, this was unsurprising as it had been niggling since the marathon but it certainly hurt more than originally planned. I questioned then whether my knee would load bear a pack up the notoriously steep track to Mueller only to descend said track again the next day. Still I packed my gear and on Friday left Cromwell bound for Twizle and a quick dip in the Omarama hot pools before an early night.

I just want to pause here quickly and talk about the Omarama hot pools. Oh. My. God. They were wonderful! I was so impressed with the set up and the price tag. For around 90 dollars you can have a private tub that overlooks a little lake and you have the place to yourself for an hour and a half. The twilight time or 8.30pm (which you can see me enjoying in the picture to your right) gave views of the closing sunset and a really beautiful light. They are wood heated tubs not sulphur or chlorinated which was really luxurious to soak in for 90 minutes.

Unfortunately it did not fix my knee.

So Saturday an alternative plan is put in place. Luke, who was roped in for the original Mueller hut mission, suggested that we ride part of the Alps to Ocean trail that weaves through Mackenzie and Otago. I'm unsure who came up with the idea of the Lake Pukaki section but breakfast in Twizle wound up with us realising we needed to go find a helicopter to fly us over the Tasman River to the start of the trail. By 11am we had dropped one car off at our end point and had driven the 45km to the Mt Cook airport to book our bikes and ourselves in.

As we go to book our flight in we question whether it's possible to do a zip up the glacier, 5 minutes later we are booking a private helicopter up the Tasman Glacier and our bikes are needed to be flown across. I'm unsure how it happened but within half an hour we were in the air being treated to some of the most amazing scenery in New Zealand while being dwarfed by Mt Cook.

There are no words to really describe this experience. The previous time I visited the Tasman Glacier and lake it was a mucky grey. I was so surprised to see it a glorious blue. I couldn't have asked for a better day in terms of photography. There was dramatic clouds, clear"ish" skies and stark contrasts. Being the only ones in the heli was such an amazing experience. On the way to our drop off I also spotted three fallow deer which resulted in a very sudden turn around to go chase them up the valley. Very fun.

The start of the trail is great. It was rougher than I was expecting but very flat so we navigated through some loose gravel for about 10km following the braids of the Tasman river. Unlike other Alps to Ocean trails this is not very well made and is probably rarely serviced.

This is by far the highlight of the trip though.

As you ride you pass crystal clear streams, there are the southern alps boxing you in and many opportunities to turn around and view Mt Cook. It's hard to not get distracted by the scenery on your ride.

For about the first 10km you follow the river to the start of Lake Pukaki.

From the Lake the track changed. Unfortunately the track the runs on the gravel road from about this point and runs near but not next to the lake. There are opportunities to access and photograph the lake, we found a few beautiful patches of lupins to photograph on our way but you are not always treated to lakeside tracks.

The track as well too is quite corrugated. After about 35km of this both Luke and I were quite tired and breathed a sigh of relief to hit some real road and breeze our way back to the car. We completed this 50km section just before some bad weather hit and decided to do dinner in Tekapo before camping at Mt Cook overnight.

That night as we drove back into Mt Cook we were treated to clearing skies from the storm we narrowly avoided on our ride. We were given about 30 minutes, enough time to set up the tent, before the second storm hit and set in for the night.

So you can imagine our surprise when we woke to this, and the sound of avalanches behind us.

Fresh snowfall on the surrounding mountains meant we were treated to some spectacular avalanches during the morning.

As the day was perfect we decided to walk the Hooker Valley. It's an easy walk but on such a stunning morning it was more for the photo opportunities. We beat the crowds and had most of the track to ourselves. Luke decided to swim out and stand on a glacial ice berg in the middle of the Hooker Lake but I wasn't keen on the murky water so I settled for a calf icing.

You can't really go wrong with the Hooker Valley track, it really does have it all.

We returned to lunch at the village with a view overlooking Mt Cook. The pub there is filled with old alpine gear and is quite famous. The table next to us had just returned from Mueller hut and surprisingly enough I didn't feel any envy at all, we were so lucky with the weather to complete everything we did.

On the way home we decided to do a spot of fishing, or rather watching a giant fish taunt us, in some of the Tasman river channels. It really was a good end to a great weekend.