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Published: December 6th 2007
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Ride to the start of the tramp The Milford Tramp
We left Chicago around noon on
Saturday, and after a tandem of flights and a pass over the international date line, we arrived in Queenstown, New Zealand at 1:00 pm
Monday The airport in Queenstown is quite small and after we landed we were greeted by a rolling staircase as we walked beleaguered into blinding sunny day.
Queenstown has the well deserved reputation of being the adventure capital of the world. Off into the distance we could see people gliding down the mountain in some sort of strap on wing apparatus. There is skydiving, jet boating, river surfing, and all sorts of bungee jumping. Unfortunately, we were too tired to indulge in any of these exciting activities and used the rest of the day to pick up last minute supplies for our journey that would begin the following morning at 7:00 am.
To begin our tramp on the
Milford Track, we took a bus to Te Anau Downs. We were able to see the county side and verify that the sheep to human ratio is probably correct (at least 35 to 1). There are many kinds of sheep. After reaching the Downs, we boarded
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The One Ring a boat and traveled through Lake Te Anau. The sun shown brightly but this was eclipsed cold windy breeze on the lake. To try to keep the lake and surrounding rivers free of
Didymo (a horrible algae that takes over everything), we sanitized our feet and began out walk. The first days walk was short, 5 km. We arrived at the Clinton bunkhouse early and had lunch. We then discovered sandflies. Because of there very small size and almost limitless supply they put up a pretty strong challenge to mosquitoes as the world's most annoying creature. Then, we walked back toward the beginning of the path and stopped at all the sights we missed on our run to the bunkhouse. There was a nice swimming hole along the river we laid in the sun.
Our next side hike brought us to this beautiful moss covered bog surrounded on all sides with snowcapped mountains. Erin was busy admiring the miniature mushrooms and reminiscing about watching the Smurfs in her younger days while Steven was plotting. Erin heard Steve hum which is very unusual for him so she turned around. Meanwhile, with a quick slip of the hand, Steve placed a
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Hello Snow! tiny box among the foliage and commented on the beauty of the plants. Erin turned around and spotted the box, picked it up, opened it, and found a canary diamond ring. Steve ask if she would marry him. Erin was excited and said yes. After enjoying the scenery for a few more moments, we headed back to the hut. We celebrated with our first ever freeze dried meal together and then went on a nature walk with the hut warden. He did a wonderful job teaching us about the native plant life. After the walk, it was starting to get dark and we left our last nice day behind us.
Still suffering from jet lag, we woke up early and were on the trail by 6:30. The weather was nice again but we were informed by the ranger that the weather for the next three days would deteriorate quickly. The birds were quite active in the morning and we were able to spot
weka,
kea,
the new zealand pigeon,
paradise ducks, Canadian geese, and possibly a
blue duck. (Steve says it was, but Erin didn't believe that we would see something that rare. After seeing more photographs of the duck, Erin concedes that she
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Up in the clouds was probably wrong.) We heard the songs of many others but they were to far up in the canopy to identify. Day 2 of our hike took us through rain forest and into a valley we were passed through our first avalanche danger zone. Avalanches still occur at this time of the year due to frequent rain falls and warm temperatures. At some points on the track, the annual rainfall can surpass 27 feet. The abundant rain and loose soils can knock massive pieces of rock off the cliffs on a regular basis, so we were on the lookout for those. Those dangers aside, as we entered the valley we were stunned by the beauty. We both agreed that this was the most beautiful place we have ever been. It was a long day but it passed quickly with the help of the generous scenery and we arrived at Mintaro Hut in time for lunch. We dried out some of gear and relaxed as we knew the next day would be the toughest as we would have to cross Mackinnon Pass. In addtion to be a resting place for trampers, Mintaro Hut also served as a congregating point for keas.
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What's a parrot doing up here? We were warned by the ranger never to leave
anything outside as the keas would carry our gear away. These parrots are notorious for causing ruckus of all types for alpine travels, frequently unscrewing the plugs on car ties and stealing things out of cars. As one of the only avian omnivores, groups of kea have been known to wet their pallet on sheep, eating the animal alive. Small children, you have been warned. After dubious weather reports from the hut ranger, we went to bed early and planned beat the rain the next day.
Although we only covered 14 km the third day of the tramp, we were exhausted by the time we arrived at Dumpling Hut. The day started off with light rain and it continued throughout the day. The first 4 km were uphill and full of switchbacks leading up to the Pass. It took us almost two hours to climb the 4 kms and reach the pass. The views on top of the pass were clouded by rainclouds but we did manage to take a picture of the valley below during the 10 second break in the clouds. A photo below depicts Steve's
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Nice weather up at the top fear that an approaching raincloud is going to wreak havoc upon the camera that Erin is holding. The wind gusts were strong and threw us off balance as cold rain drilled our faces. We couldn't reach the emergency shelter fast enough. After a couple mirages and false alarms, we finally reached it and made coffee and ate lunch at 8:30 am. We put on warmer clothes and began our descent after spending an hour in the protection of the hut chatting with a lovely Australian couple that beat us to the hut by a couple minutes. The next 10 kms were a steep descent with steps that came up to our knees. It was very hard to remain in control given that we had 25 extra pounds strapped to our backs and the path was slippery due to the rain. Most of the injuries occur on day three when trampers are tuckered out from the exhausting assent and are a bit careless on the way down. We finally made it to the Dumpling hut with sore knees and tired ankles and feet. We hung up our clothes to dry and limped to the common area to sit by the fire.
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"There is a rain cloud coming at you!" At the hut meeting that night we learned that the weather was going to bring even more rain the next day. We were quite stoked about that.
The last day took us 18 km over relatively flat land to a place with the appropriate handle of Sandfly Point. One highlight of the walk was an assent up the side of dynamite blown cliff that overlooked a small lake. There weren't any handrails to prevent us from falling. We think that there would have been a fence if we were in the US. The DOC does their best to preserve the unspoiled beautify of this area by altering the environment as little as possible. As the hut ranger put it "No one has fallen off it yet, so there are no handrails, we would prefer to keep it that way." The water in the Milford is brilliantly clear opening up the greenstone rocks in the bottom of the rivers into view and gives the water beautiful green and blue hues. We would trace the water from the peaks of the snow covered mountains to the waterfalls tumbling down the mountainside to the rivers we were drinking from below. The last
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After 54 kms and lots of rain... several kilometers of the day were difficult because the rain picked up and we were getting extremely tired. The constant rain had caused our boots to become fairly waterlogged and our cubical conditioned feet were feeling the hurt. Shortly after we reached the shelter at Sandfly Point, we boarded a boat for a short trip through Milford Sound and back to the bus for our return journey to Queenstown. We could not wait for pizza and beer and the five hour bus ride gave us time to reflect on this amazing hike.
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Mike
non-member comment
Congrats!
Congratulations guys! The trip sounds like a lot of fun so far. The pictures look amazing! I hope getting back into the swing of things isn't too difficult.