The Woods Shall Wave on Mountains

It was an early goal to walk most of the 9 Great Walks of New Zealand.  It seemed like the best way to explore this country's beauty and a goal to keep fixated on during my time here.  So when the opportunity came to head south to Queenstown on ANZAC Weekend to visit an old college friend of Brandon's, we jumped at the chance to check one of the 9 off of our list.  We decided to take an extra two days off of that weekend to hike one of the 3 Great Walks near Queenstown.  Probably because it's considered one of the most gorgeous of the 9 Walks, we aimed for the Routeburn Track.  Traversing across alpine meadows, forests of bright green beech trees, and over ridges overlooking ice-carved valleys and with views of the Southern Alps and the Fiordland Mountains.  Just reading the brochure got my senses tingling!

We didn't realize, however, how much of an effort it can be to get to these Great Walks, especially if one has to fly first to a major town before driving another couple hours to the trailhead.  After our connecting flight in Christchurch was delayed an hour due to fog, we missed our bus to the Routeburn trailhead at The Divide.  Thankfully, our bus company Transnet was extremely helpful over the phone, and they were able to transfer us to the last bus to Te Anau--the closest but smaller town around the 3 Great Walks in the area--from Queenstown, book us a cheap room at their associate holiday park, and get us on the first bus the next morning to The Divide.

We wandered around Queenstown while we waited for our transfer, rummaging through the numerous outdoors shops, passing by the long queue at Fergburger, and searching for the DOC centre to make a last minute change to our reserved huts for the next two nights.  Our bus ride to Te Anau took us two and a half hours into the sunset, and despite the warm Autumn colors around Lake Wakatipu, we easily fell asleep along the winding highway.  It was dark by the time we came upon the Te Anau holiday park, and the girl at the front desk laughed to herself when she told us that our little cabin had a great view of the lake.  "You won't even see it in the morning, since you'll be leaving before dawn," she smiled.  Too bad.

Our cabin was a tiny little thing with a severely angled A-frame roof and a bouncy little full-sized bed.  We ate the dinner that we would have had on our first night along the trail.  Like a lot of other New Zealand holiday parks, this one was clean and well set-up with a communal bathroom and kitchen in the middle of the park, where we washed up after dinner.  We were in bed by 9pm and up and out by 6:45am the next morning; our bus driver was waiting for us punctually by the front desk.  We were two of three hikers setting off into the Fiordlands that Friday!

We watched the sunrise during the hour and a half ride to The Divide, but by the time we arrived at the trailhead, a heavy fog had settled around the valleys and foothills.  We ascended for several kilometres before coming across the first hut at Lake Howden, where we had meant to stay the night before.  After a quick adjustment in gear and a snack, we set off into the rocky, beech forest  The trail leveled off just a bit as we came under a thick canopy of damp trees. We fell into a good rhythm that built our confidence into reaching Routeburn Falls Hut by sundown.   The fog broke up here and there, and as we climbed the ridge, we spotted glimpses of majestic views, of rocky faces up high overhead, peaking through the rolling mist.  We came across Earland Falls, where the thundering waterfall mist cooled our faces as we climbed over boulders to continue.

The approach to Lake Mackensie was stunning, which started first with a flat meadow.  The sun made its presence, exposing the bright green grass and the towering mountain tops beside us.  We wandered into the nearby hut, folding ourselves for rest over the wood benches and tables, only a few other hikers within earshot.  After eating lunch there, we ascended again into even thicker beech forest before it opened up to the valley faces, where the fog thickened and the wind picked up.  We spotted on-coming hikers as if they were mystical creatures emerging from the low-lying clouds.  But as we turned to Hollyford Valley--or at least what the map described as the valley in the fog below us--the view over us became more visible.

The Fiordland Mountains began to show themselves in the afternoon sunlight as the fog moved below us.  Up past Harris Saddle, the landscape seemed to unfold.  We stopped to admire Routeburn Valley from our place over Lake Harris, where we could see a slithering waterfall along the mountain rock faces and the river curl and twist from the mouth of the lake.  A chopper passed in the cloud, and just as we thought that it was too far from us to matter, it zoomed overhead, over Lake Harris!  We cheered, "This is AWESOMMMMEE!"  The rest of the walk took us over rocky wetlands and a fog-less view of the Fiordland Mountains.  And as the river descended over the multi-tiers of Routeburn Falls with the sun still reflecting off of the mountainsides ahead of us, we knew that we had made it in time to Routeburn Falls hut.

The hut was the most comfortable "outdoor adventure" accommodation we had ever experienced! The "hut"--since it was more like a backpackers hostel set at the bottom of Routeburn Falls and with a 180-degree view deck at its north side--was spread over two main buildings.  The larger of the two housed the 56 bunks, set in cubicles of 2 sets of bunks along rows of 3 cubicles each, and the toilets, which were flush WITH TOILET PAPER.  The smaller building was the massive kitchen and dining area, where we sat, cold, tired and hungry during our dinner.  We didn't really bother befriending the other 20 hikers there that night, unfortunately--a small number in comparison to what the hut had seen over its mid-summer season--as we were in bed by 8pm, exhausted and looking forward to another epic day on the trail.

The next day was only to be a 3 hour hike to the Routeburn Shelter road end.  The trail from Routeburn Falls descended quickly at first, but leveled out into a calm, flat, and well-graded track.  We crossed over several swing bridges, some more scenic than others, which crossed over emerald green water that tumbled over large boulders.  The forest around us seemed like a Peter Jackson set with trees that seemed to line up in neat rows and covered the forest floor with rich brown and green leaves.  The trail ended with one last epic bridge over a part of the river that had carved its way through massive rock faces.  And then it all opened up into a grassy meadow.  I took a sigh of relief that I had one Great Walk now checked off, and looked forward to a thick piece of chocolate as a reward.