The Milford Track

The biggest chunk of our time in New Zealand was spent hiking the Milford Track. It's a four day hike (with a final fifth day spent in the Milford Sound). We took the "luxury" approach to the hike, paying a company for a guided walk, which meant we had lodges to stay in each night, and only had to carry our clothes and personal items. This was totally the way to go.  

T & I had been training beforehand, so the 10 - 13 mile days weren't so rough. What was rough, though, was the weather! It rains 300 days of the year there, and five of those were on the days we were hiking. It was a lot of rain and a lot of cold.

The hiking company sent us some stock photos after we finished our hike. You can see that we didn't get quite the views from the brochure. But it was still fun!!!

Our version and brochure-version of the MacKinnon pass

Another set of views from the pass

 

The most extreme difference in the shiny online pictures and our experience was the sheer amount of water. That manifested in trails becoming more like streams, when the water you're meant to be walking beside gets so high it covers the trail. No waterproof gear can withstand that amount of water, so our feet stayed wet each day. Wet with VERY cold, melted snow water. On the plus side, a group behind us told us that they saw an eel swimming with them while they waded at one point. We were just as happy not to have known that was happening!

We'd heard about the Milford Track before we went that it's great in all kinds of weather. If it's sunny, you get the spectacular mountain views. But if it rains, you get to see waterfall spring up all around you. And that's what we saw - it was amazing!

Plenty of waterfalls, like this one, are there year round

Even though we stayed wet and cold all day every day, we knew that there was a dry and warm lodge waiting for us at the end of the day. We'd get to the lodge, wash our clothes for the next day, and put them in the generator room to dry. Then we'd settle in to play some cards and have dinner while the rain kept coming down. 

One of our lodges

All of the lodges except the first and last one are accessible only by helicopter. We happened to be there at one on their supply day. It was pretty incredible to see the copter navigate its way through the valley and onto a pretty tiny pad, fighting the wind each time. 

One of my favorite things about the lodges was getting to see the keas. They look like parrots, but they are huge and green, and they live in the mountains around the Sound. They are such cool birds! A guide told us (and later we confirmed on the internet) that they have the intelligence of 4 year olds. We couldn't leave anything outside because they would take it and stick it up in a tree, just for a game. At one lodge, they had a post with boots attached for the keas to chew on. So we could watch them by the window, destroying boots and trying to peck away at the helicopter when the pilot wasn't around. 

 

For the most part, the hiking was easy to moderate. The trails were pretty stony, but only one day was intense climbing. Most of the time it was like walking through a beautiful rainforest. 

 

A rainforest with snow-capped mountains above.... 

 

 
 

Our day of intense climbing was in the middle of the week. We had a 9 mile day, which wasn't so bad. Unfortunately, we also had to climb about 2,000 feet in elevation for the first few miles of that. We left quite early that day to make sure we were down the other side of the pass in plenty of time. It was 11 switchbacks up the mountain to MacKinnon Pass - named for the explorer who mapped the route to the sounds.  

The climb was pretty intense, mostly because of how hard we worked. By the time we got to the top of the pass, we were pretty warm and sweaty. That changed almost instantly, as the wind at the top was almost unbearable, and it was sleeting. We stopped for one quick photo at the memorial to MacKinnon, tried to peer through the cloud for the infamous views, but then practically ran the last 30 minutes along the ridgetop to the mid-way lodge. Luckily, there was a heater there, and guides making sure the ones of us looking hypothermic were well taken care of. Doubly-luckily, we heard the next day's group actually had colder weather with full-on snow. Shew!

Trying to make our fingers work and switch to dry layers 

What goes up most go down, and we went down for about 3 or 4 hours. And we also got in a little extra mileage since the main trail was still closed for the season due to avalanche risk. Our knees and ankles were done by the end of the day. You can be sure we spent a lazy night in the lodge and slept great that night. 

The rest of the hike was mostly flat. On the last day, we even got a few minutes of no rain!

On the downside, no rain means that the sandflies were out in full force. Sandflies look like miniature house flies, but they bite like mosquitoes and are even more aggressive. We decided to eat our lunch walking on the last day, just to avoid having to continually fight them off. T was not a fan of anything about that situation. 

 

 

Our hike ended at the Milford Sound, where we took a boat from the end of the trail to our final lodge. The next day, we took a boat out into the Sound to experience the mountains from the water. Of course, it was raining. And it was so windy we weren't sure we were going to get to go out at all - the wind was 100 knots in the morning, with a 4-7 meter swell towards the ocean side. But luckily it calmed down enough for us to get our boat ride in. And after the previous few days, standing on deck in beating wind and rain to see the best views didn't phase us at all!

 

I have way more photos than could possibly fit in a single blog post. But here's some more in a video plus some bonus action footage: