The Routeburn Track

I did the routeburn track, one of the great walks here in new zealand, with my friend Mikenna who I met in Wellington. The track goes from the divide, close to Milford Sound, over the mountains to Glenorchy, close to Queenstown. It's pretty short, about 30k and most people do it in 2-3 days. We opted for the 3 day trip. It crosses 2 national parks, fiordland and mt aspiring national park, the border being the top of the saddle that you cross on the middle of the walk.

Me and Mikenna decided to go from the divide to queenstown for several reasons, 1 we could stop the night in Milford before and say hello to people and 2 that we finish in queenstown and can have a fergburger and beer as a celebration for finishing!

It was nice popping back to Milford to see people. Nice to be back in the pub again! And Mikenna knew one of the kayak guides who works in Milford as she met him in Stewart Island earlier on in the year, that's the great thing about New Zealand, you keep bumping into people you've met before!

The next morning it was chucking it down with rain! But there was nothing we could do about it since we'd booked the huts!! We got a lift to the divide from one of my friends at Milford. The first day, it didn't really matter that the cloud was down as we were walking through bush and rainforest. The colours in the forest though are just gorgeous. The pictures I took don't do it justice, they don't really capture the lush greens you see there, it's beautiful. There were loads of waterfalls crossing the path from all the rain the night before and the main waterfall we passed on the walk we couldn't go past and had to take the flood detour route as the power of the water was so strong we would have got drenched from the spray!

From there we came to an open space called the orchard where there was just low lying ferns and a few fruit trees, it was weird to suddenly come out of the rainforest into this. Soon after we reached the McKenzie hut where we were ti stay that night. It's on the shore of Lake McKenzie which is a nice little lake, lovely and clear, with some good big boulders round the edge to go scrambling on. We arrived around 3.30 so we had loads of time to kill. The beds in the huts were great big communal things, a long bed with 4 individual mattresses laid next ti each other. You bag a mattress and snuggle up to whoever is next to you!

The next day we did a short walk from the campsite upto split rock. This is a great big rock with a crack up the middle that you can clamber through if you have a torch. From there we went back to collect our backpacks and start off on the track again. The cloud was down all the way up the hill which was a shame as the views supposed to be stunning!! Every so often the cloud shifted slightly and we caught a glimpse of lake McKenzie where we stayed the previous night.

When we got to the top of the Harris saddle, the cloud was starting to lift. We still couldn't see anything of the fiordland national park, but at least we weren't in cloud anymore. We had a lovely lunchbreak sitting outside of the hut.

When we rounded the corner into Mt Aspiring national park, though, the view was spectacular! The cloud was really high and there were amazing views of mountains everywhere you looked! We made our way downthe track really slowly, taking pictures every couple of metres it seemed, not wanting to get to the next hut as it meant we wouldn't have this amazing view anymore! We met a couple of Americans on the guided walk on the way down and it turned out they were both musicians from New York - has anyone heard of the band called the National? I haven't but I've now met the guitarist from there. Apparantly they're quite famous... But the walk was absolutely incredible and the views took our breath away. It was a lovely afternoon. The Routeburn falls hut were next to a couple of waterfalls - probably the routeburn falls thinking about it... They were pretty to sit by but very cold to dunk your feet in!

That night, I slept next to perhaps one of the loudest snorers I've ever heard in my life! Fortunately someone prodded him hard and he changed his breating pattern, he was still pretty annoying though! But the next day we headed out and had a lovely walk through the forest by a river, did a couple of stops on the way down and got to the end of the track around lunchtime. We were just in time as it started chucking it down as soon as we got into the shelter! Good timing!

We had a few hours wait for the bus to take us back to QT and had a most welcome shower, fergburger and beer!