Today we hiked up a steep track toward the Mueller Hut, which offers views of Mt. Cook, one of the highest mountains in New Zealand. Sir Edmund Hillary used Mt. Cook as a training ground as he prepared for the first summit of Everest. Since only half of the students were up for the hike after the rigor of the Milford Track, the rest of the students stayed in the luxurious Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Center, which contains a lodge, an information center, and a very nice cafe with views of the mountains.
The hikers witnessed the way that the New Zealand park service maintains trail. As we hiked up thousands of feet worth of well-built trail, we watched a helicopter take one barrel load of gravel after another from the valley floor to the trail above, where some very content workers emptied each gravel load. This went on for over two hours. Clouds obscured our views of Mt. Cook, but we enjoyed views of the glacier below and an adjacent lake, and the sun stayed on us all day.
Now we are back in Christchurch. We had a delicious pizza dinner this evening, and we will have some free time to explore Christchurch tomorrow before heading to the airport.
We have nearly run out of internet capacity, so we will upload the remaining pictures upon our return to the states. We fly out tomorrow afternoon at 3pm New Zealand time, and we will enter a time warp that will have us arriving in Nashville on Saturday night at 11pm. We should reach the Parry Center at or a little after 1am on Sunday morning.
The travel itinerary is on the Walkabout website (posted above). We should be back in cell phone range when we arrive in San Francisco at about 2pm EST on Saturday.
