Take a Hike

I am risking the rest of the NZ stories getting away from me as we start having new stories to tell from our first days in Portland. And I've been delaying writing this particular post, as I worry I won't do justice to the topic/experience.  But here goes.

After making our way to Queenstown and gathering the last supplies we would need to be out on the trail for 5 days / 4 nights, we re-packed our bags, left what we wouldn't take at the Crowne Plaza (where we'd be returning at the end) and got a ride out to the start of the Routeburn Track.

The Routeburn is one of New Zealand's nine "Great Walks," beginning in Mt. Aspiring National Park and continuing west into Fjiordland National Park. In a country replete with truly great walks, these nine tramping tracks have been specially designated by the Department of Conservation (DOC) and receive extra attention: better maintenance, more "luxurious" huts, and as a consequence more trampers.

Very fresh trampers, at the start of Day 1

A little on the terminology.  A tramp is a hike. A track is a trail. What you are doing is tramping, but when you talk to other trampers, you call it walking.  As in "how was your walk?" or "have a good walk today!" or "are you walking out (leaving the trail) today?"

"Tramping track" on day 1

You may have noticed from the picture of us above that the weather seemed to be sunny and lovely.  This was true on the first day.

View from just above our night #1 hut (seen bottom right)

Days 2 and 3 were less than ideal.  In fact, due to the second day's weather at the outset, we put our camera far away into Jason's backpack and didn't take any pictures until later in the afternoon, after the rain cleared and we had dried off and warmed up at our hut.

Forecast at the hut on night #2. Fjiordland National Park is the third wettest region in the world.

These huts we stayed in were essentially bunkhouses, with rows of wooden bunks with mattresses, and a common area for gathering and eating. In these, we dried off, rested our feet, read our books, and chatted with other trampers from around the world from Spain to Montana and right back to New Zealand.

40 trampers' gear drying out, Day 2

Jason drying out, Day 3

Our bunks, Day 4

When we started out, we (ok, I) worried our packs would weigh us down too much and the weather would really put a damper on the experience.  And while we did get a little wet and our shoulders ached at times, these minor annoyances did little to detract from the sense that, at any moment, we might just trip over a hobbit. The sense of scale portrayed in the LOTR movies is not disproportionate to the true sense of the landscape; from enchanted mossy woods to cascading falls to vast plains with grazing cattle to other-worldly rockslides that we encountered over our 5 days on the trail.

In the end, it was a slow trudge to the finish as a running injury of Jason's flared up at the end of the fourth day, making the 12km (7.5 miles) on day 5 particularly painful for him.  He was a trooper (although he says, "What choice did I have?") and we emerged at the end of the Greenstone trail more than ready to hang up our boots for a few days.

Less-than-fresh trampers!

Rather than rushing back to Queenstown after our hike, we booked a night at Kinloch Lodge not too far from the end of the trail. On arrival at the lodge, we headed to the communal kitchen to clean our dishes and discovered an amazing gift from the universe on the "Free Food" shelf of the refrigerator:

Can you see it in there??

Cold beer!  FREE cold beer!

Three whole bottles worth. :-)

Be sure to have a look at the rest of the pix from our hike and some incredible sunrise photos from Kinloch, on the northwestern side of Lake Wakatipu.  The link is at right.