The night before departure. Wine, candles, steering wheel.
After an awesome week being part of a family and community, we were ready to continue the good times with our first “Great Walk.” Before coming to New Zealand, I thought “great walks” sounded like a grueling test of a hiker’s true abilities. Really, they are the most popular nature spots in the country due both to ease of access and stunning variety. We set our sights on the Milford Track but were quickly turned off by the $210 each REQUIRED to walk the track ($170 for transport, and $40 for a compulsory Personal Locator Beacon). And this is in the off-season. During the summer the hut fees make the value of the entire trip over $400! The New Zealand tourism industry is disappointingly voracious and vicious, without even the smile and a thank you you’d find in a similar U.S. situation. Boo!
Trajl views on the way to Lake McKenzie hut
So we quickly gave up on Milford and headed instead for the famous Routeburn. This turned out to be an awesome choice as the Routeburn literally has every type of scenery we’ve found on the South Island with just the right amount of hiking. Since it’s off-season, our hut fees are covered by our backcountry hut passes! The trail has four huts, which caused us to think we should block out four or five days for the journey. We quickly realized how cruzy the whole thing was. It could even be done in one really long summer day. We split it into two nights, passing alpine falls, gorgeous peaks, and the idyllic Lake Howden on our way to the Lake McKenzie shelter for our first night. Thanks to our endless packing at the covered trailhead, we’d missed the rain and didn’t have evening drying chores. Instead we opted for a hike around the lake to a cook cracked bowler in the alpine basin before dinner. The unfriendly family who acknowledged our attempts at conversation with grunts or less was offset by a lively family group of men and boys from Christchurch. We chatted away the evening!
Halfway up the pass - rubbing elbows with the clouds!
We were among the first up the pass the next day. We had the cloud-filled basins and snow-capped peaks to ourselves almost the whole way to the top. It felt like we were hiking on the edge of the world! As we approached the trail’s summit, the freezing winds picked up and cloud from the other side poured over like a steam from a witch’s cauldron. To our pleasant surprise, the summit shelter was enclosed AND we met some wonderful Kiwi’s — JoAnn and Ian — a 50-something couple down for the weekend. We swapped backpacking tips and tricks before heading down into the fog-laden valley. At the treeline, we got to take in the pretty Routeburn Falls and explore the enormous 48-bed shelter that is full to the brim every single day of the six-month season. I’m not a lover of crowds, and I couldn’t imagine enjoying that kind of back country experience. I’m glad I didn’t have to!
clouds coming over the pass
We still had time to make it down to the Routeburn Flats before dark where we shared the shelter and dinnertime with Manabu — a Japanese man whose lifelong dream was to move to New Zealand and work on a dairy farm so he could give his children a better life with more opportunities. He turned us on to a new light-weight dinner meal (corned beef, peas, and rice) and we shared a great round of conversation (a “yarn” as Kiwi’s would say) with John — the Routeburn Falls hut warden who had dropped down to ensure our hut fees were accounted for.
the view from inside the Mid-Caples hut
Our hike out the next morning was wonderfully relaxed — far from a premonition for what the rest of the day would bring. To make it back to our vehicle, we either had to turn around and retrace our steps on the Routeburn, or find our way 25k (16 miles) to the nearby Caples trailhead. Thankfully, Jo and Ian turned up in the car park just as we struck out down the road. They gave us a ride halfway, sharing a coffee with us at Kinloch Lodge (where Pat and I went for our anniversary). It was a long walk — nine miles on the road to the Caples trailhead, and then three hours to the Mid Caples Hut. After some tense moments, we arrived just at dark, thankfully! The following day was another long, wet, exhausting, and (especially after the Routeburn) boring trudge
view from McKellar pass after the long slog through beech forest (I don't know this woman. My camera died, so I borrowed her photo).
through seemingly endless Beech forest. We finally summited McKellar pass to breathtaking views in the late afternoon. We had the pleasure of finding a brand new trail, and the creators of said trail at the entrance to our descent — turning a three-hour bushwack into a fifty minute trot. Yay! (We learned from the workers that funding for this 2.5 k stretch of trail was $600,000. That’s almost as much interstate costs in the U.S.!)
Once on the valley floor, we hiked an hour up-lake to McKellar Hut where we sunk our teeth into some much needed R&R. We shared the hut with a Kiwi hunter named Dave who was funny and a good companion. We made up for our two harrowing, 20-mile days by sleeping in well past ten — something I didn’t think I was capable of less than a year ago! Then it was back to the trailhead and up to one of the famous fiords!
Click here for more photos of stoat trapping success, waterfalls, stream slurping, and beyond!
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