Pre-Hike:
I read about this hike sometime in the Spring, when the idea of leaving everything and flying off to New Zealand was still just a quiet "what if/why the hell not?" thought. From what the internet would tell me, it's the ultimate New Zealand walking experience, giving an equal dose of alpine ridges and dense rainforest. Since it's classified as a Great Walk bookings are limited to 40 people per day during the walkable months. I would sit at work, on the really bad days, and look up plane tickets to Auckland, and booking availability on the Milford Track. When I bought the plane ticket, I almost booked the track as well. But of course I didn't, both because I didn't know my full itinerary, and I may have a wee bit of an issue with procrastination.
I monitored the track availability over the next weeks and months, and felt very calm as I watched the ticket numbers dwindle. If I just kept an eye on things, I knew I'd be able to book close to the event itself, and then I'd have the best grip on timing. I got to River Valley, and proceeded to completely forget about checking the website. On a quiet night a couple weeks later, I remembered, and scrambled to check the booking availability. Only one spot left, for all of October and November. Craaaap. So yeah, I booked it on the spot, and that's the event that's shaped the last month or so of my trip, just trying to reach Te Anau in time for the walk and not miss anything major.
Fast forward to Tuesday, and I was much less nervous than before Abel Tasman. I'd read tons of reviews on the hike, and the experience of doing a 3 day hike eased my overactive sense of panic. I'd added some new rain clothes to my repertoire, and had enough beef jerky to last til the apocalypse stuffed into my somehow ridiculously heavy pack. All set.
Wednesday:
At a grand total of 5km, Day 1 of the hike is basically the warmup. It's akin to the salad course at fancy restaurants, where it's one bit of lettuce on a giant plate and you just feel bad for the dishwasher. Which isn't to say Day 1 wasn't amazingly beautiful, it absolutely was. The day started with a bus ride to Te Anau Downs, where we took off on a 1 hour boat ride to Glade Wharf, the official start of the track.
As with my other hiking experience, and my entire trip, I was solo at the start. I've discovered I'm pretty bad at being solo for long periods of time, so I continued my well practiced technique of introducing myself to people and then casually inviting myself to partake in their trip. For this trip, I met and hiked with 2 awesome Aussies who are nurses, so I was covered in case my natural clumsiness chose that moment to result in a nasty injury.
Day 1 is an easy 5 km walk through the Clinton River valley through areas of marshland and rainforest with the giant mountains always looming through the trees. At several points on the winding track the river edges right up next to it, and gives a stunning view.
On the Milford Track, it's mandatory to stay in one of the Department of Conservation huts provided. The huts are essentially giant dorms with gas stoves. This makes life much easier on trampers, who don't have to carry stoves or tents/hammocks.
Clinton Hut. Fancy, right?
When I got to the hut, I wrote myself several helpful notes to capture the experience for later reflection. My unfiltered words of wisdom from Wednesday night include:
- Pack is fucking heavy
- Contemplating eating all of the food
- Chili for dinner. Great decision
- Burned my damn hand on the pot
With that, I tucked off to an early sleep and prepared for the first real day of hiking!
Thursday:
Thursday was a cold morning, but shockingly, the skies were clear. Maybe I should explain why that's shocking. Fiordland is the wettest part of New Zealand, a very wet country. From the Department of Conservation website, they get around 7 meters (23 feet) of rainfall every year on 200 rainy days. For reference, Mobile, AL, the wettest city in the US (assuming an article I found on Google from 2007 is correct), receives about 5.5 feet per year. It rains a whole damn lot down here, so waking up to a clear day on the Milford Track is a bit like Christmas.
We took off from the hut at 7:30AM, with a 16.5km day ahead. The weather played along masterfully, and I've never seen views quite like I did on that walk. The crazy thing about the Milford Track, and Fiordland in general, is how steep the mountains rise on either side of the valley. Sheer cliffs 1000 meters high on either side, with snowy peaks and massive, cascading waterfalls running down the sides into the rainforest at the bottom. Sometimes the forest is so thick you lose track of the scale, but every so often you break through into a clearing and get a beautiful reminder
The Prairie, a brief clearing in the track
The track began to alternate between cleared flat areas of short brush, and dense, ancient, moss-covered trees. After a while, we figured we were into the 50-something avalanche paths that sweep across the Milford Track. You see, having giant rock walls with massive snowy peaks hanging over a deep valley is a good recipe for some very powerful avalanches. Fortunately there area signposts at a lot of the clearing which tell hikers to get a move on because there's a reason there aren't any tall trees left where they're walking.
Stopping on the wrong side of the No Stopping, Avalanche sign because I live life on the edge
A few hours into our hike, while it was still a bit cold, our spirits were high. We'd covered over half of the distance, and we hadn't even stopped for lunch yet. We pressed on, and got our first look at the Mackinnon Pass, part of our third day's hike.
Yowza.
That's also about when we got our first inkling that the weather was about to take a not so mild turn. See if you can tell what's different in the next picture.
What followed was a set of poorly made decisions. First, we came to the last marked shelter before the hut, with about 6 kilometers to go. We decided we all weren't hungry enough yet, and we'd stop in a bit. Mistake 1. Then, though I put on my waterproof pack cover, I figured a bit of drizzle wasn't worth getting out my new rain gear, like my waterproof jacket or rain pants. If it started raining harder I'd throw them on, but who wants to be the guy dressed for a blizzard in a fine mist? That guy isn't cool at all. Mistake 2 and 3. I'd like to say skipping lunch precipitated the rest of my questionable decision making, but I should know better.
We walked on for a while through the drizzle, as the track started gaining altitude and the rain very slowly intensified. I say "very slowly," because in my compromised state I managed to transition perfectly from "this rain isn't hard enough to put on waterproof gear" into "well this gear is already soaking wet, might as well save the waterproof stuff for tomorrow." Mistake 4.
More rainforest!
After walking a few km in the rain, once I started passing patches of snow on the ground, I finally had the lightbulb moment that maybe my jacket that was soaking up the rain wasn't the ideal clothing for this situation. I put on my rain jacket about two hours too late to actually make a difference, but I'll give myself a solid B for effort. Now I'm no map maker, but I have a serious issue believing that the distance I covered in the rain that day was only 6km. Seemed to be about 6 miles, but that may be related to how damn cold I was, standing there like an idiot, soaking wet.
Finally I made it to Mintaro Hut, the stop after day 2, and proceeded to shed my wet clothing everywhere. The first thing I noticed about the hut was that it, like me, and everything else around, was freezing cold. There was a tiny fire in a woodburning stove we could light, and we did. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this was the worst fireplace ever. After 2 hours, I could put my hand on top of the metal lid of the stove, and hold it there for a while. It was barely warm to the touch. Not ideal, as I'd just soaked through my only pair of hiking pants, and my fleece jacket which would have been nice to have as a warm layer that night.
I went to bed around 8:30 that night, as the rain came pouring down. I also jotted down some helpful notes in my book, just like before:
- Well that was different. And by different I mean wet.
- Clouds rolled in from Mackinnon Pass.
- Stupidly decided not to put on waterproof jacket. Way to go.
- Freeze dried beef hotpot for dinner
- Not as good as the chili
- I would kill for a coffee
That may offer you a little insight into my mental state after a rough day. So you may wonder how it was sleeping in the huts. Night 2 was a wee bit rough. I got the bottom bunk, which was awesome at the time, because big man fall hard. Nobody took the top bunk over me, so in a bout of genius, I took the mattress off the top bunk and leaned it up over the glass door to the outside, in an attempt to keep in as much warmth as possible. All was good, until about 3AM, when the skylight over my head sprung a leak.
...
*drip*
...
*splash*
Every 3 seconds. The water dripped down off the window's edge, and struck the now unguarded slat of the top bunk, and scattered into ice cold droplets that sprayed, you guessed it, right onto my face. That'll wake you up quickly and uncomfortably. Of course, it's also freezing cold, so the last thing I want to do is get out of my mummy bag. I try to roll over, and move to a different part of the bunk, so the falling water will just soak my bag and not my face. Not successful. Turns out that in a dark, quiet room, the sound of water dripping over your head can drive a man insane. After about 10 minutes I can't take it any longer, and have to make a choice: do I get up, and try to stop the leak? Or do I take off my only dry clothing and use it as a makeshift cover for the top bunk in the hope that it catches most of the water? I chose option B, because it didn't involve me getting out of bed. I wasn't too happy to put on those wet clothes in the morning, but at least I got some damn sleep after that.
Friday:
We woke up late on Friday, because the ranger instructed us to wait for her in the morning before heading out. As we knew before we took the trip, there was a significant avalanche risk during the 3rd day of the trip, when we'd be crossing snowy Mackinnon Pass. If the risk was deemed too high, they'd be flying us across the avalanche zone in a helicopter. Turns out, heavy snowfall plus a hot day with some rain meant the helicopter was a must, and I got set for my first ever helicopter ride!
Good weather for a helicopter ride!
Look mom, I'm in a helicopter!
Fortunately, it stopped snowing in time for the heli ride, and we all got ferried over the top of Mackinnon pass, to the Anderson Cascades, a set of absolutely picturesque waterfalls that follow the track down the pass. The handy thing about the heli ride was that it cut out the remaining 2.5 hour climb up the pass, so from then on the trip was mostly downhill.
We walked down from the pass, into the Arthur river valley. The walk was not strenuous, and I only slipped and fell one time. Not bad.
Seriously, so much greenery
I tried to walk behind the falls, and wound up getting demolished by sheets of water being blown off the falls. If you look closely, you can see I've finally put on my rain jacket, which is smart. If you look closer and compare with the previous picture, you can see I took off my damn rain pants, which was really, really dumb.
After a couple more hours, we finished the trek to Dumpling Hut, the 3rd and final hut of the Milford Track. The last night is always the best, because you've got to eat the rest of the food to avoid carrying it all the way out. My thoughts on the night from my little book:
- What a horrible name for a hut. Now I want dumplings. Next up, Pizza Hut.
- Got jokes for days
- Only slipped and fell once
- Roast lamb freeze dry tonight. Not excited.
Saturday:
The last day is the longest day of hiking on the track, at 18km. We got up at 6AM to catch the 2PM boat from Sandfly Point, the track's official end. It was a gray and damp morning, but no rain. Have I mentioned how insanely lucky we were to get 2.5 days without rain in Fiordland? Insanity. But we took off, back through the rainforest in all our wet weather gear, eager to just get out back to civilization. At this point, I would have paid a handsome fee for a nice hot shower, so very little was going to stop me from catching the first boat out.
After an exhausting but speedy 18km, we got our first view of Sandfly Point, and freedom. Now, a note on the name Sandfly Point. Sand flies are New Zealand's answer to the mosquito. They look like fruit flies, don't make that awful noise, but leave the same red, itchy welts. However, we were informed by the helpful ranger at the Dumpling Hut that Sandfly Point was named in the 1890's, and had no bearing on the actual sandfly population in the area. Not too bad he said. Turns out, that ranger is a lying liar who lies. My legs are now covered in bites, which I can't stop scratching. Wonderful.
After a 20 minute boat ride through Milford Sound, the hike was officially over. I bid farewell to my hiking buddies, and sat down for my now traditional post-hike meal of a burger and a beer. I spent the night in Milford Sound, and caught a bus back to Te Anau, where I'm now scratching my innumerable sandfly bites and working on my next adventure!
Cheers,
Jared
No comments:
Post a Comment