Milford and Kepler

Now that I'm somewhere Internet access is not ridiculously expensive, Queenstown, I can catch up a bit. Oh, and this is sort of a long one.

First a summary

Nov.13-16th (mon-thurs) Milford Track Great Walk
Nov. 17th (fri) recover from said Milford Track Great Walk
Nov. 18th-19th (sat-sun) walk first section of Kepler Track Great Walk
Nov. 20th (mon) go to Queenstown
Nov. 21st (Tuesday, oh yeah, today) do this stuff and probably go bungy jump

Milford Track

http://www.doc.govt.nz/Explore/002~Tracks-and-Walks/Great-Walks/Milford-Track/index.asp

New Zealand is renown for it's amazing hiking trails. The Department of Conservation (DOC) does a great job of maintaining the trails and making them very accessible. Milford is listed as being one of the most scenic walks in the world. With my limited experience I'll have to agree (so far). It's a "Great Walk", meaning that it's one of the most visited ones and also one of the more expensive ones. Along all of the Great Walks are huts with bunk beds, flush toilets, and mess halls with sinks and gas cookers (stoves). These huts are also manned by hut wardens. So, with all these amenities, staying in a hut is $40 NZ (~$27-$28 US) per night, almost twice what I've been paying to stay in hostels. The Milford is the most expensive of the Great Walks because it requires boat transport to the trail head and from the trail end. This adds up to about another $80NZ. All that aside, it was worth it. It's located in the Fiordland National Park and is 33.5 miles long. You are required to take 4 days, but it could easily be done in 2 or 3. The first day is sort of useless because you only hike about an hour before reaching the hut, but since this walk is fully booked from now until next April, there is no room at the next hut and it's impossible to move on unless you're doing the whole thing in one day. I think they just want to get an extra $40 from each of us. Man, I'm sounding a little bitter about the cost. I'm not, really, but it's worth pointing out that some of the lesser used tracks only run $10 a night and you can choose which huts you want to stay at. Granted they aren't manned and don't generally have gas cookers, but....

Instead of going into a lot of detail about the hike I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves (with the help of the captions of course.) I do want to mention a couple of things though. A surprisingly large amount of Americans on this walk. I think of the 35 total trampers there were at least 12 Americans, 3 or 4 of which were from the Seattle area. One girl from Montana, Kelly, was a WSU alum (1996) and was on the woman's crew team while attending. Weird small world. The weather worked out pretty well, but we were all pretty much soaked on the last day. It rained all day long. Which was good and bad. We were able to see Milford as it is most of the year but it was also sort of miserable walking in wet clothes and shoes for 5 hours. I had rain clothes but they didn't seem to help. I guess they're not rated for this sort of dampness. Here are the pictures..

View from the boat as we head towards the Milford trail head

Our first view of the trail

MicKinnon Pass in the distance

Carolyn crossing the first of many swinging bridges. She wasn't so keen on me bouncing around :-)

The first of many, many waterfalls

The first night we took a little guided hike from the hut warden. They've had a lot of trouble with maintaining some of the bird and foul life in New Zealand. New Zealand had no mammals until man came to the islands. This is a trap for catching a little vermin called a stoat.

The second day we were held back by the warden for a couple of hours because of the heavy rain up river. They received about 4 inches over night. If we had left early (7 or 8) we would have had to wade through water up to our waist. As it was, we still had to go through several spots where the water came almost to our knees. My shoes were pretty much soaked. Funny thing, if I would have waited until noon or so, I would have remained perfectly dry.

Fellow trampers wading through the waters

Oh look, more waterfalls. I think I have a billion pictures of waterfalls but I only put a few in here.

Right around noon the sun came out. Here's another view of McKinnon Pass. We go over it on the third day but several of us hiked to the saddle the second evening because the weather was good.

Weka!!

Mountain buttercups. (this picture is just for Kevin since he liked my other flower pictures so much)

Lush foliage. I guess 24 feet of rain each year will result in scenes like this.

Our second hut was about 500 meters from the top of the pass and it was recommended that we climb to the top that afternoon/evening if the weather was good because it wouldn't likely be good the next day. Here's a view near the top of the pass.

There's a faint glint of a rainbow created by a waterfall. Very nice. I'm pretty sure I heard at least a half dozen avalanches of varying sizes while hiking this area.

Me at the top. Looking a little disshevelled, but that's not unexpected after hiking 10 miles and then another 5 up and down the pass (luckily without my large pack, I'd get to do that the next day)

Here's a view of our hut at Mintaro Lake for the 2nd night.

The view outside the hut in the early afternoon.

Later that evening.

This is a Kea. An Alpine Parrot. The only place in the world you'll find them is New Zealand. They're very smart and very curious. They love shiny things. If anyone left anything outside within reach from a bench or a tabletop it was open game for these guys.

The next day the weather wasn't quite as nice. Here's another view up towards the pass. You can just make out a couple of other trampers becoming engulfed by clouds. It was near freezing at the top and we saw the faintest of snow flurries. Most people stopped at the hut to warm up a little but I wanted to keep all the valuable momentum I'd gained on the way up.

Me near the top on the third day. Dressed quite a bit warmer than the evening before. And that's not urine in my Nalgene, it's lime drink.

Looking back towards the valley that we'd come up the previous two and half days.

Mountain stream...

And next to that stream was an elaborate system of boardwalks and stairs. Maybe that's why this hike isn't too cheap.

Towards the end of the third days walk was a side hike up to Sutherland Falls, the highest in New Zealand. It may not look like much in the picture but it's just over 1900 feet tall, I think the 6th tallest in the world. The original European discovers vastly over-estimated the height at 4000-5000 feet and let a rumour out that they had found the highest waterfall in the world.

The third night we were informed by the hut warden that there were potentially very heavy rains coming over night. If it had rained 6 inches or more we would have had free helicopter rides down the track about 3 miles. Unfortunately it only rained about an inch overnight. But the rain never stopped all day long. This picture is of the hill just behind the third hut. The day before none of these waterfalls were visible. Since it was raining the whole way out on the last day I didn't take many pictures while hiking.

The end of the trail...and soaked to the bone. I hired a set of over trousers but they didn't seem to keep me very dry and the raincoat I have really isn't designed for this sort of punishment. We had to hang out at this last shelter for about an hour before catching the boat to the Milford Sound Wharf. I'm pretty sure my rain fly worked pretty good at keeping my pack dry, but the pack sat in the back of the boat for about 30 minutes and wasn't very dry by the time we got to the wharf. Luckily I had all my clothes and stuff in a dry bag in the pack so everything important was still dry.

Since I pretty much had my head down as I was slogging along on the last day, I didn't look up to much, but the hills were completely alive with waterfalls. It almost looked as though the mountains were melting. These last couple of pictures are from the shuttle bus back the Te Anau. It made me want to go back to Milford Sound with a car of my own on a rainy day just to take in the wonder of all the water.

Carolyn was staying in Milford that night to take a cruise on the sound, so we were parting ways. We got to the wharf soaking wet and she rushed to catch her shuttle bus to the lodge and it was a somewhat abrubt separation. She emailed me later and apologized for taking off so quickly, especially since the bus she got on was the wrong one :-) No worries. Thanks for being a travelling partner, Caroyln. Hopefully I hook up with some others that are as understanding of my quirky ways as you were.

Kepler Track

http://www.doc.govt.nz/Explore/002~Tracks-and-Walks/Great-Walks/Kepler-Track/index.asp

After a day of rest from completing the Milford track I decided the hiking bug was still biting me, so I figured I'd do the first day of the Kepler track. The start of the Kepler track is located near Te Anau, so it didn't cost anything extra to get to the start. I could have taken a water taxi across the lake, but I didn't think a couple of extra hours of travel would hurt, especially since it was all flat. The Kepler is a circular track of 60 km (~37 miles) and is rated as difficult. By contrast the Milford was rated as easy. The first day basically involved a climb up a small mountain of about 1200 meters (~3900 feet). I'm not very fast when it comes to going uphill and I figured it would take me near the estimated time of 4.5 hours. All the legs of the tracks have estimated walking times and I'd come to realize that the DOC times are about 1/3 longer than what it actually takes a semi-fit tramper, but since this was all up hill, I figured it'd be closer to the actual time. Not the case. It only took 2.5 hours to get to the first hut. Oh well. I really liked this walk, it reminded me a lot of the great PNW with tons of ferns and moss covered trees. The trees are predominately beech trees and I'm not sure if there are many of those in Washington, but it sure felt like home. There was a really cool Cave a few minutes walk from the hut. I'm not sure how far back it went, but I went in at least a couple hundred meters. I was by myself though and I was a little apprehensive about going to deep. I'm told that there are other caves in the north island that are really cool but also labyrinthian. I might check them out, but I'll probably want to go with someone else and leave a well marked path. This cave, on Kepler, was just a straight shot for the portion I explored and it would have been difficult to get lost. BTW, in about 2 weeks (Dec. 1st), they're going to have a race around the Kepler track, 60 km. The record is something like 4 hours and 40 minutes....crazy Kiwis. Anyway, here are some pictures from Kepler.

More lush foliage. This spot actually really threw me for a loop. I could have sworn that the water was right there and I was seeing reflections of the tree, but upon closer inspection it was obvious that the water was 10-15 meters below where I was standing. I'm not sure if you can get that feeling from this picture. I can, but I was there :-)

Looking back across Lake Te Anau at the town of Te Anau

Some sort of stone bluff that was a surprise.

Watch out for the wild mountainbarrows. The inhospitable alpine climate breeds a real mean streak in them. This one almost got me, but I was able to stare it down in time. They're menacing but can't stand being given the evil eye.

I'm about 15 minutes from the Luxmore Hut here. The abrupt change from trees to alpine brush was surprising. It also became much more exposed. The section that is normally done on the 2nd day of the Kepler is mostly like this and is purportedly the most hazardous.

The Luxmore Hut. A palace in the wilderness.

Looking down into the entrace of the Luxmore Cave.


Cool rock formations in the cave. There may have been bigger ones farther down, but I was sort of chicken.



I love the timer on my camera. I went down that passage on the left another 50 meters or so but then lost my nerve. Although I do have to say that my Petzl head lamp worked awesome in here.

Hi Guys!! (gotta love the timer)

The weather cleared up that evening and we had some splendid views of the lake and the surrounding mountain tops.

Mountain tops.

This track was much more dangerous than I orginally thought. This is one of the infamous fern trees that are known to attack and eat unsuspecting trampers. I had to high-tail it through one section of the track, fearing for my life.

I guess the Kiwis are to keen on people getting their funk on. At least that's what this sign looked like to me.

Funny, that morning, at the Luxmore Hut, there was sleet and it was awfully cold. I guess I should have waited a few hours before leaving. This is a view of the same mountains I could see from the top the prior evening, but from the lakeside about 45 minutes walk from town. The day turned absolutely awesome with sunny skies.

The view from one of the roads in Te Anau. A nice place to live and it doesn't rain nearly as much there as the surrounding areas. It's in a nice little rain shadow and only gets about 4 feet of rain a year compared to the 24 feet that falls within 20 miles of here.

So, now I'm in Queenstown and it's a beautiful day. I took a little time-out yesterday a watched a movie, The Departed. Pretty good flick, but not for the faint of heart. I had to remind myself a few times during the viewing that I wasn't in Kansas anymore. Movie theaters all look the same so it's easy to forget that you're thousands of miles away from home. Like I said earlier I will probably do the bungy thing. Everyone I've talked to so far has said I should definitely do the Nevis, which is a 134 meter drop, three times the distance of the original bridge bungy (which I might also do.)

Sort of an update (I wrote most of this earlier today, but haven't posted it until tonight):

I did my first of three bungy jumps today. Super cool. I even got dipped half way in the river. Tomorrow I do to more, one from 134 meters (3 times the height of today) and one over rocks at the top of the hill 400 meters above Queenstown. Vidoes of all three jumps will be on a DVD and I hope to send it to Wes and maybe he can work some of his magic and post them on the world wide web for all to enjoy.

Oh, and if someone has a list of phrases that I can subsitute for super cool, I'd love to hear them. Everything here seems to be super cool and I'm getting tired of using those terms over and over again :-)

Happy happy joy joy.