Chasing Stars and Adventure: My Thrilling Journey to Capture the Milky Way at Aoraki Mt Cook

"The Ghost"

This is it. This is the shot I visualised capturing over a year ago but which took two trips to capture. I took over 400GB of images on this 10 day trip, mostly due to enormous timelapses. But if I had only gotten this single capture I would have come home happy.

This single capture was taken on the RHS of the toilets on a small "snow hillock ". It was below freezing but for the 20 minutes I spent taking this shot and setting up the timelapse (to follow) I was fully dressed in all of my snow gear. The ghost is actually me re-entering Mueller Hut after I had started the timelapse. An inadvertent illuminator of the hut from my headtorch.

5 hrs later at 2.30 am I came out and collected the camera. I had a lens warmer on my 20mm prime and a battery bank plugged into the camera to keep the battery topped up for the timelapse. I have also for some reason been leaving my wooly hat on top of the camera, just to act as a little barrier between the freezing air and the camera body itself.

It's so important to not just focus on the image, but to also soak up the night sky. And I did here and always make an effort to do so.

Back in the hut and I did my usual climb into the sleeping bag and then scroll through all of the images to see what I got. It took me a while to get to sleep but that was ok. I was very happy with the nights shooting.

Will I go back? Well I keep telling myself that at 52 the hike is too much for me with all my camera gear, overnight gear and food for a few days. Anyone who has hiked up Mt Olivier will tell you that it is no picnic. But...I love it up here. Its just spectacularly beautiful. In fact because I trained 6 weeks before this trip it was not as hard as the previous year. But going down is tougher, those 2200 steps below Searly Tarn really take it out of you (and your thighs). My 16 yr old son did say he would like to come with me next year and I think it could be a special moment for both of us to climb this mountain together (I might get him to carry some of my gear ...

"It is not the mountain we conquer", but ourselves" - Sir Edmund Hillary.

Z8 20mm prime 1.8 iso3200 10s

The Milky Way captured from the Tasman Glacier lookout

Looking down onto Hooker Valley and Mt Cook from Mueller Hut

Mueller Hut under a spectacular Milky Way - taken in July 2025