SEALY TARNS
IN WINTER

I touched on Sealy Tarns in my report on the Mueller Hut route, but I decided it deserved a report of its own, especially the winter experience. We went in July, a few days after a fairly heavy snowfall had come through. The whole valley and the Mount Cook park area can end up buried in snow, which makes sense: it sits above 750 metres and it gets properly cold in winter, down to minus ten at night.

Before setting off we did not think much about what lay ahead, and we took no special gear. That was a mistake. The one thing we did get right was dressing warmly: it was the depth of winter, a cold front had come through, and the forecast for the area was minus five during the day, lower in the shade morning and evening. I had thermals, hiking jeans, a t-shirt, a long-sleeve top, a fleece, a jacket, warm socks, and a hat, and on the whole I was comfortable the entire walk.

We did not leave especially early, around 7:30 in the morning from Queenstown, and with a stop for breakfast we were at Mount Cook by eleven. Driving up to the car park we were met by a winter wonderland. Everything was buried in snow.

We had to use the paid car park: the roadside where you can usually park for free was all snowdrifts. Facilities are also cut back in winter, and it turned out there was one working portaloo for the whole car park. There were plenty of people despite it being winter and despite the popular Hooker Valley track being closed. We stood in the queue for twenty minutes, and the toilet itself was the worst I have seen in New Zealand, both in condition and in smell.

Honestly, that got to me at the time. When you pay 25 dollars a day to park and then cannot see where that money goes. In my experience, both in 2023 when we were first there and now in 2026, after the paid parking came in, nothing about the facilities has changed: they could not cope with the flow of visitors then and they cannot cope now.

Anyway, enough of that. We started walking at 11:30. The first 1.2 kilometres take you along the track to where the hard climbing up the steps begins. On that stretch there is a gentle, even 100 metres of gain, enough to warm your legs up. But it was already beautiful here: every tree under snow, and if you stepped off the packed trail you could sink in to the knee.

As soon as we parked I noticed how much ice there was around. During the day the sun melts the snow and overnight it freezes again. Looking across at Sealy Tarns in the distance, under snow, and at how slippery the car park was, it dawned on us that the staircase would be exactly the same.

When we reached the steps, of which there are more than two thousand, this is what we saw.

Everything was buried in snow, and wherever the sun reached there was a lot of ice. And we realised that suffering lay ahead.

In summer the climb up these steps is a test in itself. There are a lot of them, they are uneven, and they wear you down fast. Here we had to haul ourselves up in places, grabbing whatever we could with our hands.

We also saw people up there who were better prepared than us. They had chain spikes, also called microspikes: small metal spikes on a rubber harness that stretch straight over your boot and give grip on packed snow and thin ice. They are cheap, light, and fit in a pocket of your pack. The one thing not to do is confuse them with proper mountaineering crampons: those have long points, need stiff boots, and come into their own where the slope gets genuinely steep. On our section chain spikes would have been plenty, and they were exactly what we did not have.

As we climbed, hard as it was, the views over Mueller Lake and the Hooker Valley gradually began to open up.

About 220 metres of climbing after the steps begin there is the Lower Viewpoint, where you can sit down, catch your breath, and photograph the valley below. From here you can already see Hooker Lake. We reached this point, or rather crawled to it, in about an hour and a half, whereas in summer it would take an hour.

We got as far as this point with my parents in summer, incidentally. My mother and I had done walks with 400 metres of gain and more before, and this was only 320 from the car park, but she found it very hard and could not go any further. The main difficulty was that in summer it is hot and there is almost nowhere to get out of the sun. And the hardest part is probably that the steps come in all sizes, shapes, and heights. So it is worth being honest with yourself about your fitness. The track is not long and the gain, while significant, is not extreme, but the steps do their work and drain you. Here are a couple of shots of how it all looks in summer.

From that platform you have another 820 metres to walk and 243 to climb. Thankfully only half of that is still on steps, and the rest of the gain is easier going.

The higher you get, the more of the valley opens up.

That last section took us a little under an hour. All up the climb from the car park came to about two and a half hours.

At the top an epic view of an alpine winter awaits.

And the tarns themselves, which in winter will most likely be under ice and snow. Everything up top is buried too, and to get a couple of shots I had to wade through drifts up to my knees.

Even though it was only two in the afternoon, the winter days are short and the sun had almost dropped behind the mountains by then. All of Sefton was in shadow, and fifteen or twenty minutes later the shadow reached the platform we were standing on.

And here are a couple of shots of how it looks in summer.

From here the route carries on up to Mueller Hut, and we could even see a thin set of footprints heading that way. But that would definitely have called for mountaineering gear, proper crampons and possibly an ice axe, and the avalanche risk up there is markedly higher.

Our feet were already wet from the snow, we were above 1,000 metres, it was getting cold in the shade, and we started heading back down.

And that is when it became clear the hardest part was still ahead. After a sunny day the snow had softened, and as the temperature in the shade began to drop the track turned very slippery. If your coordination is good, you can slide down the steps in a crouch, and it can even be fun. But if that kind of entertainment is not for you, the descent will be a long one: you will be grabbing whatever you can to avoid going head over heels and hurting yourself.

There were three of us going down: me, my wife, and a friend of ours. She is not as reckless as we are and found the descent harder, so we took it slowly. I slid down every step, and it struck me as more efficient and easier on the knees than walking down each step individually in summer. But it is definitely riskier and more likely to end in injury: the steps stick out in places, and you cannot do it on your tailbone without breaking something.

In the end the slow descent also took us around two and a half hours, about as long as the climb.

In closing: do not copy our experience exactly. Going in winter is fine, and it really is worth it, but take something for grip. Either mountaineering crampons, if you have them, or chain spikes, though not the ten dollar ones off AliExpress.

I gave this route a "hard+" specifically because of the winter conditions. In summer it would sit somewhere between "medium+" and "hard", depending on your fitness.

I love the Mount Cook park, and one day I think I will be ready for a winter trip further up, to Mueller Hut.