Living the Good Life: The Milford Track

Hi again,

After leaving Eyvi and Stacey to do their glacier adventure, we started driving south for Te Anau. We were pretty excited to do the Milford Track but also sad the time with Eyvi and Stacey had gone by so quickly. Congrats again, guys on your marriage and hope the honeymoon was unforgettable.
We had to rip through a lot of territory to make it all the way from Franz Josef to Te Anau in one day (a 7 hr drive), but we figured we could always come back up.
We got all packed up and ready that day, we were getting pretty excited for it. The next day we met our boat at Te Anau Downs. We took a 1 ½ hr boat cruise up lake Te Anau to Glade Wharf, the start of the Milford Track.

Views from the boat ride

The first day of walking wasn’t too bad, only 1 ½ hrs. Of course, we were gawking at everything and taking pictures like crazy so it took us over 2 hours. Haha. I got a lot of bird pictures, but I decided in order to do that topic justice I needed to devote an entire blog to the Birds of Milford...you’re welcome.

I can only deduce that this is a slide for small rodents

We also did a wetland walk.

Our bags weren’t too heavy; mine was mostly full of candy so it got lighter as we went. We spent our first night at the Clinton Hut. There are only 40 bunks in each hut so space is limited. Jared booked our tickets back in September!

Clinton Hut
The next morning we set off, this time we had a 6 ½ hr walk to do. Of course it took us 8, but again we are gawkers. And possibly out of shape. There were a couple of lake side-trips that we did.

Fjordland is in a bit of a drought currently, and they hadn’t had any rain in a while so a lot of the smaller streams were bone dry. It was quite weird going over these huge bridges and nothing but rocks underneath. I think in heavy rain this place can get pretty crazy, though. One negative of no rain is no waterfalls, and I think day 2 of the Milford is really quite spectacular if there has been recent rain because the waterfalls cascade off the sheer rock faces into the valley below. We just used our imaginations. And stayed dry all day.

PicsDay 2 of the track was special to me for a completely different reason because it was my birthday. I turned 23.....Jared was such a sweetie he smuggled in cupcakes which we ate after supper at the second hut, Mintaro Hut. Also as a present to myself, I jumped into the freezing cold Lake Mintaro. It is glacial-fed and cold as. We knew we had the most challenging part of the track to do the next day so we didn’t play Piggerick too late into the night. You know the game where you roll the pigs like dice and count points depending on how they fall? If you have no idea what I am talking about you need to get your hands on this game. It is so much fun! Jared kept getting leaning jowlers and I kept rolling pigs out.
Day 3- Time to climb the Mackinnon Pass. Depending on the weather this is either the best or worst day of the track. There was a heavy cloud cover in the morning while we were climbing, but in the 2 hours it takes you to get up there it had lifted quite a bit. People on our hike that had got up earlier and hiked up were waiting around for the clouds to lift, further affirming my suspicions that it never pays to get out of bed early.

Misty morning climb

Getting higher....

We're there!

A little windy

Mackinnon Memorial

The Mackinnon Pass is so named for Quintin Mackinnon, who was the first European to blaze this trail. Maori had known about it well before him, as they used it as a trading route for pounamu (greenstone), a cousin of jade.
When we reached the top of the pass it was pretty windy, but the views were absolutely epic! A clear day up there is completely magic.

We made some soup up on top and warmed up in the day shelter. What comes up must go down, and we started descending down the other side. Along the way there were lots of waterfalls to take in.

There was even a rockslide, but we were far away at the time. It was still really loud, and I wouldn’t want to be around when a large amount of rock gave way. That’s why the Sutherland Falls side-track is closed. They had a big rock-slide back in October that obliterated a bunch of the track. So unfortunately we couldn’t get up close to the 580 m waterfall (the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere). This is the closest view we could get.

We made it to our third accommodation- Dumpling Hut, in good time. Our hut ranger told us the next day’s walk would be pretty flat but still lots of cool things to see along the way.

Sunset at Dumpling Hut

We had to get up early the next morning because we had to be at Sandlfy Point by 2 pm and there was 6 hrs of walking between us. So I was up before the sun rose. I know, it was painful. But, we got on the track in good time and didn’t have to rush too much. We also stopped to take pictures at all of the little side attractions.