[some of] The Hollyford Track and some other bits


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Published: December 9th 2010
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Lake Marian and the Hollyford Valley


Lake MarianLake MarianLake Marian

Lake Marian and some impressive mountains
Day 1

Awoke quite lazily, abluted and checked out - quick check of email before I leave. Then into town to complete some menial stationery-based tasks (well, I am on "holiday") and then to the Sandfly Cafe for an excellent breakfast (7.6 on the SEBI).

Forgetting to pop into Mitre10 for duct tape (that reminds me - you're way out of date when it comes to kit updates - there are rips that need taping), I hit get on the Milford road again, heading for the Hollyford road this time (yesterday's Gertrude wander was directly off the Milford road). Anyway, I eventually reach the Hollyford road and immediately pull over to the wee side park at the beginning of the Lake Marian track. Dump the car having picked out the day pack, a bit of water and some fruit.

An hour and a half up a pleasant track, passing Marian falls, and I'm into a hanging valley between a pair of impressive mountain ridges. Before me is the picture-postcard beauty of Lake Marian. I scramble on along its edge until I find a spot that appears to be begging me to enter. A quick splash and the world is cold - in stark contrast to the very warm world my body had been inhabiting only moments earlier. I'm in a near freezing lake under snowy mountain ridges and the sun is shining. Piddonwattle.

March back down, feet complaining slightly but nothing serious. Back to the car and drive down the hollyford road for 40 mins or so to the road end. The end of this road is a mile closer than it used to be - the bridge got washed away a few years ago. Dump the car but not collect the pack yet as I head for the "30 minutes return" trip to see Humboldt Falls. In DOC speak, "30 minutes return" means 10 minutes up if you actually walk instead of waddle and 5 minutes down. And indeed it is so. Humboldt falls are impressive even thought they are only seen from a distance.

And then back to the car to collect the laden pack. As a test, I've loaded the pack with 4 nights' worth of food to see how that feels. To be honest, it makes little difference pack-wise whether you're going out for 2 nights or 4. At least that's what
Lake McKerrowLake McKerrowLake McKerrow

My swimhole
I tell myself as my shoulders creak under the weight of the pack. Still feeling good though so off for a 3hr march to Hidden Falls hut. Leaving road end 15:40, which is later than I've ever started a tramp but the hut is only a (published) 2hr 30min walk so no worries.

Pleasantly weird walk with a little bit too much assistance provided in terms of boardwalks and the like - the private Hollyford Track company bring "guided" walkers along here so they've spent a fair amount of cash making sure their people don't have to work too hard. Two hours in and I'm being sprayed by Hidden Falls - a lovely feeling as a rainbow washes over me (the sun's behind me as it lowers itself gracefully towards the mountain ridge behind me). Pop in to Hidden Falls hut to find a trio of brash Kiwi hunters bellowing at each other good naturedely as the six visitors look somewhat uneasy about the whole thing (guns hanging outside the hut).

One couple who arrived last decide they don't want to argue with them and head for road end after all. I have a chat with the hunters, all very friendly and perfectly acceptable once you get past their "hard-man" defence. They smile and say "you can squeeze in here mate, no worries". I decide it might be nicer to head up the track some more as I know they will go out shooting tonight and then roll in disgustingly early in the morning and want tos leep in. Too much like stress for my liking, but I wanted to make the atmosphere a bit better for the other four before I headed out. They're all smiling as I leave, so that's good.

Now, the sign says 3hrs 30mins to Alabaster hut andit's 6pm. Annoying. I head out, feet aching quite badly already. I ignore them - they will just have to put with it, we're going to march to the next hut - I'm not getting there any later than I already am. I hate arriving late in huts and have visions of trying to squeeze my sleeping back onto a mattress surrounded by grumpy trampers so I keep the pace up. I make the gorgeous, lake-side hut in 2 hrs and there's two bunkrooms and one other person there - a young German who is resting his legs in one of the rooms. I claim the other - can't believe my luck. Very glad I marched here though my feet are really feeling it now.
Can't be bothered to cook anything and breakfast doesn't actually feel that far back so I make do with a sandwich and some good ol' scroggin. For those who don't know, scroggin is Kiwi trail food - nuts, dried fruits, and some "treats" (chocolate covered bits, sweet yoghurt covered bits). Kiwis reckon you can live on the stuff pretty much forever. Apart from your teeth rotting, I think they might be right.

Anyway, bed is very welcome when it arrives. Woken a couple of times during the night by possums on the deck outside and by stinging sandfly bites but quite a good night's sleep for a hut night. Intentionally lazy start in the morning and I have the hut to myself as I make coffee and a large bowl of Mother Hubbards Fruity muesli (nearly the same stuff as scroggin but with lots of oats and grain in it).

Day 2

I leave sleeping bag and cooking kit behind but don the pack again and head out into what is already a warm day. Along the shores of the lake and, at the junction of the tracks, decide to backtrack ten minutes to the posh guided hut where they also take booking for flights and jet boats. You see you can walk to the top of the Hollyford (the sea at Martyn's Bay) and then either fly back to various places or get a jet boat back to here. I pop in with an idea I might be able to get a boat out to the bay and then back the next day but it turns out the only thing I could do is walk out as far as I can (nowhere near the bay in a day) and get a boat back. Slightly tempted to have a boat ride back then decide I'd rather walk. Not sure I like the idea of boats jetting up and down in the wilderness.

So, I walk for three hours to a wee hut call McKerrow, which is on an island called McKerrow, on the shores of a lake called McKerrow. Named after some bloke called McKerrow apparently (another surveyor). It is an island when the water is high but today is really struggling to qualify as such as the flood channel is about an inch deep at its shallowest point. After some time trying to find the track on the other side, I walk through some bush and onto a big, wide, sandy bay riddled with the debris (dead trees) of many a winter storm. To the other side of the bay and I find the wee hut. I pause in its shade to note down a whole bunch of ideas that have appeared during the walk then walk on a hundred yards or so and find an idyllic swim spot. Feeling decadent, I strip off and dive in to the icy cold water. Stunning. There's a glacier about two thousand feet directly above me and I'm skinny dipping. Piddonwattle.

I claim a decent walking stick from the shore of the bay (yes, I did get dressed again) and head back the way. I partially wish I'd allowed more time and could complete the walk out to the sea but am actually somewhat glad I have a gorgeous, quiet (I hope) hut waiting for me. Another three hours back over crumbly terrain and I've done two things:

1. I've gone over on my left ankle twice. My strudy boot does save the ankle from any serious damage but I can feel the tendons / muscles / ligaments (I'm not sure I can feel the difference between the three) are certainly making their presence felt.

2. I've bashed my right knee. There are big muddy patches at regular intervals along the bush-clad parts of this track and some of them require skirting around. Not too difficult but a wee bit annoying. So I'm skirting round one of these quite ably while using my newly-acquired walking stick to lean into the mud, hoping it will find something solid down there. I'm checking what the stick's doing at this point, not what my legs are doing. There is a fallen tree to my right and it is jutting out about a foot over this mud. I'm not looking but I am moving so as my right leg moves forward it finds the splintered end of the trunk knee-first. A slice on the face of the knee and then a bounce-gash deeper and a bit lower on the leg. I stamp into the mud and swear internally. Yeah, right - if you believe that, you'll believe anything. I swear loudly and badly to make sure every bird within a few hundred yards knows there's a wounded mammal around. I plod through the mud, squeeze some water onto the wound and try to wash any dirt out. It hurts. A bit more swearing but the knee seems to still be in one piece. I can see a swelling rising just below the kneecap but I don't think it's terminal.

So, I arrive back at my hut (yeah, it's my hut now - first time I've spent a second night in any hut I think). There is a French couple creeping around and whispering (I'm not sure, but I think they think I'm the warden) and a German couple fishing by the lake. Both couples have spotted my kit in the bunk room where I left it and have opted to house themselves in the other bunk room for the night. Excellent - I get a room with a lake view to myself again tonight. Both couples seem very awkward and I am very, very tired so the evening is very quiet. I make a couple of efforts at beginning a conversation but they don't seem willing so I read the DOC literature instead. So many problems to solve, so little time left before it's too late.

I'll keep this preaching session short but there's a bird cvalled the Kereru here (native wood pigeon) that grows to nearly two foot high. Yup, you guessed right, it's endangered. Stoats, rats, etc, all bad. At best, there are currently about a thousand left of these birds. Now you may be thinking "it's only a pigeon". So here comes a biodiversity lesson. Since the extinction of the moa, this pigeon is the only bird left in New Zealand with a beak wide enough to eat the berries of a large number of native trees. There are a number of species of native tree that rely on berry-eaters to propagate. If this pigeon goes, the trees will, in all likelihood, die out before they can work out a different way to spread their seed. If the trees go, it is likely to have an impact on something like 60% of the estimated 70,000 species that live here. Do the math; 60% of 70,000 is 42,000 species that may not have a habitat to live in. It is actually estimated that 35,000 of the endemic species in New Zealand have not even been classified yet. Let's make sure 20,000 SPECIES don't have a chance to survive before we even know what they are. I'll end the lecture by saying there are people in New Zealand who are still shooting these pigeons. For food - as if these people are hungry...

Anyway, looks like, if we keep going, we might have to pay people to go and pick the berries and spread them. Best way to do that is by eating the berries and crapping the seeds out all over the place - preferrably while flying over some fertile land. How ludicrous would that be? And how entertaining would that be? Wonder what the pay would be like for that kind of job? Presumably the cv would need to include a regular bowel and hangliding skills :-)

So I went to bed, stretched my legs out (massive relief), and lay by the window looking out over the lake as the stars started to appear (I could even shut the door to my room - you would pay a fortune for such a room anywhere in the world and it would be very, very hard to find one so quiet). All through the night I was only awakened by the possums scurrying around their invasive business (best not to think about what they did to my socks and boots that were out on the deck) and by, in turn, my right knee throbbing a bass line and my left ankle strumming some punk-style rhythm guitar.

Day 3

Well, I did wake and I did walk back and, yes, it hurt quite a lot but I am now sitting in a very fine restaurant with a japanese teenager (16ish?) across the room from me doing a mighty fine job of teaching his young brother (probably 6-8 years old?) some quite complex trigonometry. The kid is not struggling with it. The lesson is in english.


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23rd December 2010

An adventure
I like adventiures, and this certainly seemed to be one. I particularly liked the idea of skinny dippping in the lake, and I assume that it was icy cold. Nevertheless I'm sure it was invigoratiing. Perhaps the Franch and German contingent didn't have a good command of The Queen's english. Should have tried conversing in Greek. As for the Japanese chappie. Good effort!

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