After hiking the Abel Tasman Great Walk, I couldn’t get the South Island off my mind. However, this time I was heading much farther south than before. The flight into Queenstown provided one of those moments where I couldn’t hold back a smile, as we slowly descended in between two giant mountains and landed on this small patch of flat land. Queenstown sent me on a journey of reminiscence, as it reminds me so much of the ski towns back home.
We had one night in a nice hostel before catching a bus down to the start of the Routeburn, it’s funny how much more you appreciate having a warm bed after trips without one. We treated ourselves to a big breakfast the next morning, knowing we would be eating freeze-dried meals for the next few days, and caught our taxi. The taxi driver was great, he gave us all kinds of helpful advice about, not only the Routeburn, but also about traveling around the South Island in general.
One of the coolest things he informed us of is the fact that in the Fiordlands you can drink the water right out of the streams. Now being someone who has spend my fair share of time in the outdoors, I’ve always known ‘don’t drink unfiltered water’ as survival rule number one, but this is one of the only places in the world where the water is 100% safe, and the most delicious water I’ve ever tasted. The reason the water is so pure is because this is one of the wettest parts of the world, so moss grows freely and rapidly here and acts as a filtration system for any contaminants that may exist; water is continuously pumped through it. Apparently, the Routeburn can see around 270 days of rain a year, and the Fiordland’s get more rain a week than most places on earth do in a year. On top of this, very few animals live there so there really isn’t a lot that needs to be filtered out.
Once we arrive at the start of the track, we quickly stretched and threw on our backpacks. The first day was quite casual, as we were camping at the Flats campground, which is the first along the track and only a few hours in. This allowed us to enjoy water that was truly a color of blue that I have never seen before. On top of the incredibly clear water, the rocks had a silver sheen to them, truly unique from any rocks I’ve seen before.
This
first day we had perfect weather, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky
(which is quite rare in this part of the world). After our leisurely
walk into the flats campground, we found a nice spot to set up our tent
and did some exploring before ”cooking” dinner. My backpacking food is
typically freeze-dried meals that only require the addition of boiling
water. So after waiting for our meals to reconstitute, we enjoyed the
much needed nutrients and had good discussions with the other people
camping at the flats that night. A group from France, a guy from
Denmark, and a couple of other Americans added to the diversity found at
that campground.Once the sun started to go down, a department of conservation worker started checking to make sure we were all good with our paperwork (you have to reserve spots ahead of time), and warned us of the Kia and their antics. The Kia are the worlds only alpine parrot, and they are as smart and tricky as they are beautiful.
According to the DOC worker, they will steal your shoes, or anything else they can get their beaks on, and are even known to make a hole in tents while people are sleeping to see what’s inside. She said they will even have one distract people while the other one swoops in behind and grabs something. Although we were glad our tent was untouched, we were all quite disappointed we didn’t have a run in with the Kia on this trip, but I think it was getting a little cold down there for them. The clear sky continued as the sun went down, exposing a brilliant sky, and a crystal clear view of the Milky Way,
and a gorgeous half-moon (I could only imagine what the stars would have looked like during a new moon).
We weren’t really sure how cold we should expect it to be along the track, as the day was quite nice, but we could see snowcapped mountains in the distance.
We bundled up and heading into the tent for a night of hearing the wind speak through the mountains. In fact, the night was so windy that we lost our tents rain tarp at some point (thankfully it didn’t rain that night).
The next morning came quite fast, although we took our time to eat breakfast and break camp. We were warned on our way out of the impending storm that was moving in, and told we need to get to our next campsite as soon as possible. That was easier said than done as our next site was about 8 hours away, and we had a couple thousand feet of incline ahead of us. A grueling morning put us ahead of schedule however, and we were able to get our big accent behind us before the moisture moved in. We spend the entire afternoon hiking in the clouds, until we finally came around the side of a mountain to see the fog below us blow away and expose a gorgeous lake and our campsite for the night.
There was still a long decent before reaching camp however, and we climbed back down to the tree line. The forest we wandered through down to our campsite was absolutely unreal. The trees were blanketed in moss, and the smell of plant life was overwhelming. My visual sense for the color green was overloaded, and I spend a long time just staring in awe at the trees we were passing.
It’s amazing what this world produces when massive amounts of water are pumped through an area for tens of thousands of years. As we broke the crest of the forest and saw the Lake Mackenzie campsite for night two, we were all quite relieved, as it was an enervating day. We quickly set up camp and laid down for a nice afternoon nap. Once we arose, the only thing that was on our minds was food. Another night of freeze-dried food and great conversations was upon us. This campsite was much larger than the first one, so there were a lot more people with whom to converse.
One of the best conversations I had was with a girl from France and a guy from Belgium, both of whom have been traveling by themselves for quite some time now. I actually ran into the French girl a few more times while in the South Island after this trip, which was quite fun. Although the sky was very ominous, the impending storm thankfully held off until we had gotten into our tent and settled down. We spend the next 10 hours listening to a heavy rainstorm while we were in and out of sleep, and woke up very very wet.
The camping sites had an elevated footprint to keep us off the ground since it gets so cold there, however our 4 person tent was too big for the footprint so it sagged down to the ground on all four sides. This combined with the massive amount of rain created a moat surrounding us on the inside of our tent. Obviously, these factors made for a very hard morning, as we all tried to get somewhat dry, change, and pack in the rain, as well as dry out our tent. Although we knew we had a lot of time that day to get to the end of the track before our bus came, we were cold and just wanted to keep walking, so we made great time through the beginning of morning.
One of the craziest experiences we had on the track was when we had to pass under a MASSIVE waterfall. The power of this natural phenomenon cannot be understated, as it was fueled by the rainstorm that lasted all night. As we walked by it, the wind it was generating threw us around like rag dolls, and the mist coming off felt more like a fire hose. Everything that may have dried out from the morning was again soaked, pushing us to walk even faster to the divide.
Once we reached our final destination, we had a couple hours before our bus would come, so we sat and reminisced on all that we had just seen. 32k of hiking, 3000+ feet of elevation gain, hours of sweeping vistas from above the clouds, crystal clear water, vibrant green forests, raging waterfalls, and a beautiful night sky were just some of the views we were blessed with during the trek, and the desire to explore more of this part of the country has been ignited inside me. I’m grateful for the trials and tribulations we experienced during this trek, as experiencing this part of the world should not be easy, and the weather that gave us such discomfort is the same weather that makes this place so unique and beautiful.
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Read more from Colin at https://planestrainsandtravelsustained.wordpress.com/
To find out more about the IFSA-Butler program at the University of Auckland, visit http://www.ifsa-butler.org/university-of-auckland.html
To find out more about the IFSA-Butler program at the University of Auckland, visit http://www.ifsa-butler.org/university-of-auckland.html
