Activity Summary
Thursday 26th January - Day 147 (continued)
Drive to Fiordlands (Te Anau)
Friday 27th January - Day 148
Doubtful Sound cruise:
Lake Manapouri
Bus across land to the Doubtful Sound
Doubtful Sound cruise
Saturday 28th January - Day 149
Moved campsite to Eglinton Valley
Mirror Lakes
Gertude Saddle
Sunday 29th January - Day 150
Milford Sound road trip (minus the Sound)
Lake Gunn nature walk & swim
Lake Gunn north side
Pop’s view lookout / Hollyford valley lookout
Christie Falls
Monkey Creek
Milford Valley lookout
Milford Sounds drive through
Tutoko Valley & river hike miscommunication
Hundred falls
Monday 30th January - Day 151
Milford Sound cruise (Cruise Milford)
Milford Sound lookout track
Milford foreshore walk
Tuesday 31st January - Day 152
Luke: Routeburn track, New Zealand great walk
Nicola:
Key Summit track
Drive 6 hours past Queenstown & Glenorchy to pick Luke up
Summary
Te Anau
Not much in the small town but it made it very easy for us to do the Doubtful Sound cruise. It is the closest town to civilization down the Milford road, as Milford itself is tiny and pretty hard to get to.
Milford
Beautiful place and the cruise was definitely worth it. The village is tiny with barely anything there so it is very much a day trip destination. As we stayed in Eglinton for a good long while we were very much prepared for the remote living and were fully stocked and planned out with our food.
Accommodation
Te Anau - Lakeview Kiwi Holiday Park
Number of nights - 2
Price per night per person - £16
Decent enough campsite, its main perk was location close to amenities and the Doubtful Sound. The kitchen was pretty cramped when full with people cooking and this stressed Nicola out quite a bit. The TV room was just a couple of sofas along the wall of the dining room which again, had too few tables for the number of people there.
It was a short stay so it wasn’t too telling that it wasn’t overly comfortable but it was ok.
Eglinton / Milford - Eglinton Valley Camp
Number of nights - 3
Price per night per person - £13
The campsite was in a lovely location, with the Eglinton valley ranges towering above the campsite in the background. The bathrooms were unisex and there were not very many of them so there was an annoying element of queueing come the end of the day when everyone started settling in for the evening.
The kitchen again was absolutely tiny so it did get cramped very quickly, especially when one family claimed the entirety of the one dining room table one evening effectively kicking Nicola off.
The Fiordland sandflies here were not overly populous but damn did they bite. Luke was nursing multiple chunks taken out of his skin for a good few weeks.
Diary
[Continued]
Luke had decided to drive to Te Anau from Invers the long way around the coast and up the main road along the Fiordlands national park from the bottom possible point. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake (rather than taking the quicker direct route) as it turns out there is little worth seeing until past Te Anau. Between the Fiordlands national park and the road is pretty much just farmland so our attempt to see some of this famed natural beauty failed really.
Once at Te Anau and the campsite we pitched up fairly easily, Nicola always cheering when she had easy access to the bathrooms which were a very short walk away.
Nicola was in charge of dinner but as she cooked it felt like the entirety of the campsite descended on the kitchen at once which meant using the hobs was more like elbow fighting. To add to this, an effort to treat herself to a hot chocolate, the overly powerful microwave made this explode and panic mode set in. The calming influence of Luke brought peace and tranquillity back to the chaos until Nicola dropped a load of the clean utensils. One of the bowls smashed and Nicola’s calm spirits with it. It wasn’t Nicola’s evening.
The only tour company that operated the Doubtful Sound cruises was RealNZ and it was a pretty long day out simply because it was so inaccessible; a boat across lake Manapouri, a coach ride across the Fiordlands mountainous roads and then onto the cruise ship along the sound. To then do it all in reverse and be back at the car 7 hours later.
We arrived at Manapouri for our cruise at 10.30am (didn’t fancy the earlier one) and boarded the boat with relative ease. It is a big ship that accommodates a large number of people but it didn’t appear like it was a sell out so there was plenty of space to move around or try to navigate a decent spot throughout the whole day.
It was very grey, cloudy and wet on the ride over lake Manapouri so there wasn’t a whole lot of wow factor at this point so we stayed inside most of the time standing and looking out of the front glass windows.
Once on the other side we were all shepharded into coaches and had a very nice ride across part of the land parts of the Fiordlands. The coach driver was engaging, gave us a load of information along the way and we had a few stop offs at a pretty cool waterfall and river crossing. Having a ton of tourists descend from coaches with cameras frantically being waved around is always a pretty painful sight, especially as they just get in the way of traffic and other people.
A good 2.5 hours after setting off we were finally on board the boat for the cruise of the Doubtful Sound. As everyone got on board it turned into absolute bedlam with people trying desperately to get a seat on the small upper deck with direct views across the whole of the Sound. By now the sun had started to come up so it was fairly warm but as soon as we would start moving into a raging sea headwind it would plummet quickly. Looking around the poorly prepared tourists Luke cynically stated 50% of these aggy pricks will be below deck in 20 minutes and was rewarded with being right. Luke was very happy standing the whole time so found and stayed locked into what he thought was the best seat in the house.
The cruise was pretty amazing. Given the rains over the last few days, the high and steep mountains of the fiord had many a waterfall pouring out from multiple points which was incredible. If it had been pouring down with rain the views would have been absolutely spectacular but it turns out it had been an unusually and incredibly dry January for the region so we were very lucky with what we had. The sun even can out to make the picture truly sparkle.
The cruise went along the whole of the sound to the sea and then back along various arms of the sound. It got properly windy by the time we reached the sea, enough for a lot of seawater to come careering up to the top deck with some serious lean on. Nicola wisely took herself downstairs at this point.
One of the best parts was a stop in one of the arms of the sound and a call for complete silence initiated as the engines were cut. Thankfully it seemed everyone saw the benefit in this exercise and actually shut up. It was incredibly peaceful with just the sounds of the local nature taking charge for once.
When done with the cruise we came right back the way we came. It was a pretty long day which naturally came with a higher price tag because of it but it was very enjoyable and we were fortunate enough with the rain to kick start a lot of the waterfalls in the region that we would miss from the Milford Sound cruise in a few days.
Luke took charge of cooking this evening for obvious reasons.
We had done everything we wanted to around the Te Anau half of the Milford road, so while it was annoying to pack up and move the tent 45 minutes up the road, this would prove to be a really good decision as most of the stunning spots were north of Eglinton and it takes a long old time to drive to Milford. Cutting out that time from any car journey was a sensible idea.
On the way to Eglinton we stopped at the Mirror Lakes which just so happened to coincide with coach loads of people doing the same thing. Navigating clueless tourists who did their best to get in the way of everyone got the better of Nicola who was done with this destination before it started. Luke however thought it was pretty excellent - the still water from the lake perfectly reflecting the mountains he so loves drooling at was cool. Also laughing at people taking terrible selfies was good fun. What were they even hoping to capture? The beauty was in the perfect reflection, not their ugly mugs with half mountain half lake reflection. Epic example of doing it badly for the insta.
Luke’s favourite heard in Hallward (notts uni thing) moment was an American gasping to his friend ‘omg you can see the reflection of the mountains in the lake’. No shit sherlock.
We decided to go to the Eglinton Valley campsite and try our luck at checking in early or at the very least putting all our fridge food away before going over to do our walk in the afternoon. This was not a problem so we decided to pitch up immediately so as to not do it later and then drive over to the Gertude Saddle car park.
We hadn’t timed this overly well however. As it was early afternoon and the car park was tiny we really struggled for space. Initially we had parked uber close to the main entrance in to the car park, getting our nose in as close as possible but the fear was another idiot would park opposite the road from us and in effect block any hope of some monster campers getting in and out without smashing up our nose. We had started walking before it was evident that this was going to plague Nicola throughout the walk so Luke ran back and followed a couple of lads who looked like they had completed their walk. Turns out he was correct so patiently waited for them to take off before claiming their spot.
Luke is a fair amount of a quicker walker than Nicola when out on a track (walking anywhere else however, absolutely not) so the idea was he would power on and catch her up. Nicola however was waiting patiently under a rock for him to resurface so we were together most of the way.
The Gertude Saddle walk is quite a challenging one. Distance and elevation wise it's not too bad on paper but after walking through a lot of overgrown bush (not so fun) the trickier bit of climbing up a steep rock face takes a bit more skill and patience. There were amazing views of the river running down with crystal clear pools of water.
Near the top of the first rock face is the Black lake where quite a few people were having a nice swim in the ice cold water and sunshine. At this point Nicola started to feel pretty uneasy as to summit there was a steel rope assisting a vertical climb to reach the lake.
The sketchy bit began now. The saddle route is advised only to do in sunny weather when there has been no rain the day before and conditions are perfect the day of the hike. The sole reason for this is the walk requires walking on steep flat slabs of granite, made possible by the friction provided by the dry rock and hopefully the wearers decent walking boots. A lot of good fun scrambling (in Luke’s opinion).
Nicola did not like this bit at all. It took a lot for her to keep going but she did much to her credit as the fear really did take hold and that there was absolutely zero signal the whole of the walking route plus 30 minutes drive to the divide on the Milford road. Any problems here are pretty problematic, with a 4h lead time on calling an ambulance.
The summit to the saddle continued to be steep, pretty sheer in places and quite difficult to navigate and find the cairns round to the top, Luke doing his best to find routes that would put Nicola at ease. It took us a while but we got there. Nicola celebrated by breaking down in tears and couldn’t really enjoy the view so much with the stress of having to descend. So we quickly turned around and descended.
We made it down all in one piece, opting not for a swim in the lake as it was pretty late by the time we got to it and Nicola really just wanted to be back and done. Luke met someone later on in NZ who was swimming in the lake and saw someone fall down the sheer cliff face when descending and break their ribs requiring a helicopter to lift them out. Turns out carrying around emergency transponders is well worth the cost.
We did however get to see a wild Kea drinking in the flowing water down from the mountain which was so close and so cool!
Very much ‘type 2 fun’ this was described as. Great achievement for her and hopefully would put her a bit more at ease going forward doing these sorts of hikes but we think it will be a Luke activity going forward.
It was a good hike:
11.5km
626m gain
Walking time 3.5hrs
Total time 5hrs
The evening was spent rebalancing excess adrenaline and emotions to then have a much more relaxed Nicola friendly day tomorrow. The campsite had great views however.
We had decided to separate a “Milford day” into two parts; scenic drive to Milford with stopovers and the Milford Sound cruise. The reason being was that it takes a whole lot of time to drive to Milford and fitting in stop overs with the cruise would have been very tiring. So the more relaxed option was the right one.
First off we started with a very short walk called the Lake Gunn nature walk. It was an incredibly chill and nice walk through some temperate forest close to the large lake Gunn. After spending some time pottering around we decided on one of the viewpoints of the lake emptying out down the river as a good spot to have a quick swim. Nicola got her jebs out (there weren't too many people walking around the track) and all was right with the world.
Refreshed and happy we continued on the drive stopping at the Lake Gunn north side for some lunch and extended chilling. Here a dude was far more brazen than Nicola and had his wang out. First time seeing any nudity in NZ which seems just as prudish as the UK.
The road to Milford is windy, narrow in places and full of wonderful mountain scenery. We stopped off at Pop's lookout which also had views of the Hollyford valley track, one of the NZ great walks. Pop pop, take in the view and we were back on our way.
Another quick pull over spot was the Christie Falls which looked very inviting for a quick roadside dip. Mighty cold however and the family who arrived at a similar time we did were there for about 2 minutes before going back to their camper. Not tempting enough for us. Falls Creek Waterfall was a little further up the track but we could not be bothered to walk it.
Probably the most disappointing stopover was Monkey Creek. Can’t really explain what the view was of but it offered a secluded spot for us to urinate. It’s the little wins.
To get to Milford, the road traffic is required to go through a single lane tunnel through the mountain for a fair old distance. This was cool although the waiting at each end was pretty long.
The views on the other end as you emerge from the tunnel and high up in the valley are immense. There is a good stopover on the side of the ride called the Milford Valley lookout so we spent some time soaking in some views.
We continued the drive to Milford simply because it seemed like a sensible place to turn around and we needed some fuel. Milford is hilly and was draining Chopper quicker than Luke anticipated. It did however shed some very valuable light on the parking situation. It was going to cost $25 for the day if we had parked in the village but in arriving ahead of our cruise, we were able to work out there was a free car park in the Deepwater Basin with a short walk.
On the way back we stopped at Tutoko Valley which was one of the many wonderful rivers and then started a hike that neither of us wanted to do. Nicola assumed Luke was in need of a walk but thankfully we didn’t get far before Luke asked why we were doing this. There was a lot of relief on both ends.
The last stop was the Hundred falls but as there had been no rain for a long time, there were zero falls.
Back at the campsite we did some exercises and yoga outside in the shade which was very pleasant. The sandlfies are a bit of a bitch but the weak NZ bug spray seemed to do at least a little in preventing them swarming.
To get to our cruise on time we set off from the campsite a good few hours beforehand in order to get through the potentially very busy and slow Milford road and allow us some time beforehand to park up at the Deepwater Basin free car park.
We arrived in good time but it is a long old drive and were very happy with giving ourselves plenty of breathing room. The problem with leaving so early and Luke having consumed his ritual driving morning coffee meant he was nursing an almighty need for a shit that wasn’t possible at the campsite. This started to get pretty uncomfortable on the road, building pretty badly while in the car eating breakfast and then approaching nuclear by the time we needed to set off on our 20 minute walk to the harbour.
Luke pretty much ran off by himself in order to address his problem as quickly as he could. An old couple were very polite in letting him pass as he was ‘a lot quicker than them’. He refrained from telling them he was about to shit himself.
The cafe in the village was a lot closer than the harbour so he made a beeline for the closer option and fortunately made it in time to obliterate the cafe's only male toilet cubicle. He has ranked this ordeal as one of the worst near misses he’s had but it would take a lot to beat his India experience & the spicy commute to work incident.
Reunited and Luke now very much relieved, we continued the short walk over the harbour, had a quick walk around and chilled until it was time to board. The views of the Milford Sound at 9.30am however were absolutely stunning. The tide was in and in near enough complete calm, the water reflected back the mountain views which was stunning. As the tide rolls out later in the day this beautiful view is completely lost so we were very happy to admire it in the morning.
The cruise we had chosen was Cruise Milford, its USP being that while it could hold a lot of people, it only sells half the number of seats and therefore creating a more intimate experience and avoiding clashes of what is the most annoying part of travelling - us tourists. It delivered on this so well, especially compared to the RealNZ experience on the Doubtful Sound. The captain was engaging, there was no pushing of aggy tourists constantly trying to take the ‘perfect’ picture and the whole experience was relaxing and calm.
We were on the water for an hour and 45 mins, plenty of time to appreciate the mountain ranges, falling waterfalls and beautiful scenery. Wildlife wise there were a lot of seabirds flocking and fishing with a few lonely male seals chilling on bachelor rocks.
One of the highlights was the Hanging Valley waterfall. It looked pretty spectacular with plenty of water gushing over the side of the rock face and to top it off the captain turned the nose of the boat into the waterfall. So everyone outside got pretty wet but the experience was good fun and the views were so good. It was hella sunny anyway so drying off was not a problem.
There’s a reason why this is up there as one of the most popular tourist spots in New Zealand, it is truly beautiful.
Once back on land we had a short walk around Milford some more, completing the Milford Sound lookout track which wasn’t really worth it and then continued back to the car along the Milford foreshore walk.
Now back at the campsite in the late afternoon, Nicola went off for some alone time around the Eglinton valley while Luke exercised and continued his writing in the shaded outdoor spot.
We started cooking early to avoid the rush of people in the tiny kitchen and prepared a whole lot of power pasta for both our big days tomorrow.
Luke, having done absolutely diddly squat research on NZ prior to arriving (again - many thanks to Nicola for sorting everything out while he worked too hard) knew absolutely nothing about the great walks of NZ and certainly had no intention of hiking any of them. They are incredibly popular and usually require use of huts to stay in while attempting the long distance, multi day hikes. They are NZ’s equivalent of getting Glastonbury tickets and all the huts on all the routes were sold out waaaaaaaay before we arrived in NZ, let alone learned about them.
So Luke, now well versed at finding walks he likes based on blog posts & staring endlessly at the AllTrails map, fell upon the shortest of these great walks a few days ago called the Routeburn track. This route stretched 32km from the Divide in the Fiordlands to about an hour north of Queenstown near Glenorchy and had 1,500m of elevation gain and expected walk time of 10.5hrs.
As we have made our way around Luke’s fascination with mountain climbing and getting bigger and harder walks has grown and now asked himself the question ‘could I do 32km in a day’. If he was to attempt the Routeburn he would have no choice but to 1 day it as all the huts along the way were booked out. After pitching the idea to Sam Brunt, who had run it, said it was very much achievable and that was all Luke needed to get hyped for trying it.
Today was that exciting day. Both of us would start the Routeburn together and parting ways as Nicola went up Key Summit Track while Luke continued up and through the mountains and out the other side. Nicola would then drive 324km to pick him up, expected to be a 6 hour drive. She really is a stellar girlfriend.
To give Luke plenty of time we packed up the tent et al and were at the Divide for about 8am, ate some breakfast and then started our walk together at a decent pace but not breakfast vom inducing speed.
Once at the parting Nicola carried on up to Key Summit. Unfortunately it was a pretty cloudy day and at that time the cover was pretty low so there were limited views for her so she whizzed down and was back at the car pretty quickly.
Nicola’s day was very unexciting. She ended up travelling for the next 6 hours, stopping for fuel and to eat lunch before arriving at our Queenstown campsite. She dropped the food off and was back on the road to meet Luke at the Routeburn end with the intention of walking the short Routeburn nature walk at the South end. The things she does for love eh.
Luke story time:
Samwise and Frodo were parted. And would not be in contact for the whole duration of the Routeburn because there is F all signal the whole way. A little challenging when trying to arrange and coordinate pick up times. My estimate was that I would complete it between 8 and 9 hours.
The start of the walk is through temperate rainforest and involves very gradual climbing along a very well looked after path so is dead easy. A couple of sections have rock slips and warning signs to not hang around as they are active / dangerous but these offered the first real views of the Fiordlands & mountains in the distance. It was a lot of distance into the walk before these views started getting a bit more consistent but there was a very nice waterfall as the first key landmark.
The walk then comes up to the Lake MacKenzie hut at about 12km in. The hut is in a very flat part of the mountain and a very popular rest point. I could see the appeal of staying overnight here simply for the social aspect. I stopped briefly to empty my shoes of loose stones and got talking to a local who was trail running the route. It would take him 4 hours and cost him $250 for someone to drive his car from the start of the walk to the end. Savage amount of money - thank you again Nicola.
From the lake the walking started to get a lot more fun. Nice bit of an uphill section I could power through with nice views of lake Mackenzie and the mountains. Pretty easy climbing however.
Once hitting the saddle of this mountain was the best part of the walk. The walk continued along the mountain with views stretching out over Hollyford (another of the great walks), the Hollyford river, the Fiordlands and snow capped mountains in the distance. A family who were staying at huts while doing the walk started up a short conversation with me stating ‘you’re clearly doing this in a day’. I curiously asked what gave me away and she said it was the pace, lack of struggle and clear fitness. Compliment taken and ego boosted.
It was pretty windy at this point and had very short bursts of rain so it was a bit annoying trying to juggle staying dry and at a good temperature but thankfully the rain held off and once on the other side of the mountains again the wind dispersed. I had half my pasta sitting on a very wind exposed rock simply because the views were great.
At the point where the Southland borough meets Otago I had a stop over at the Harris shelter to finish the rest of my food. The views were less great here but I needed the fuel and there was a comfy enough bench inside and away from another rain spattering. Here I learned about the conical hill track which a few people were powering up, one guy adamant it was very very tricky. Can confirm it wasn’t all that bad and would have done it if I had more time.
Carrying on I hit Lake Harris and the crossing over from the Fiordlands national park to the Mt Aspiring national park. In the early afternoon, all the people staying in huts had clearly emerged and now having achieved the highest point in the track it was all downhill. Most people seemed to be middle aged to old so I had a lot of overtaking to do. It got pretty annoying after a while but thankfully the track was so un-technical.
At 20km in and on the downhill I just tried to get down as quickly as possible. There were a number of cool landmarks such as waterfalls and mountain ranges in the distance but most of the appeal was definitely on the other side. And I really am not a big fan of going down.
At the Routeburn Falls hut there was a decent waterfall and I stopped for a slash and also saw what the hut was like. A lot of people were clearly already done for the day and the hut seemed decent enough.
From that point onwards it was pretty boring. I was back walking through forest on a very uneventful path so at this point put some music in. It got a little more exciting once walking along the ranging Routeburn river and crossing bridges but that was fairly short lived.
I finished the track just as Nicola had arrived and started to go on the Routeburn nature walk. It had taken her as long to walk Key Summit and drive to the other side as it had for myself to walk it. She’s a hero.
I really enjoyed the walk. It could be argued that the cloudy and cool weather was on my side as it meant I didn’t overheat and the cloud cover was actually quite interesting to watch over the mountains vs full blown sparkling sunshine. The track was so well maintained, there is absolutely zero technical skill required which for me is not as fun. Distance wise it wasn’t too hard for me at all and I could have quite easily done a lot more but I would have been pretty bored. No blisters and my legs were fully functional afterwards. Travel fitness win.
The views were good but it came nowhere near other hikes such as Mueller and Avalanche peak. But one of the great walks off the bucket list.
Luke story over.
The drive from the end of the Routeburn to Glenorchy was a pain in the gravel ass so Nicola was understandably very tired and not overly happy with being shaken as if she was riding a digger to pick Luke up. Luke, still very much having the use of his legs, therefore drove the hour back to Queenstown and gave Nicola a very well deserved driving rest. She is the best. Although when we pulled into a lay-by and Nicola needed to pee using the door as cover from potential traffic, Luke, slightly confused by what was happening, decided to try close it and knock her over into her puddle. She wasn't overly happy.
Both of us were pretty tired at this point but we had a wonderful tent to pitch up. So while Luke hammered away, Nicola went to get some chips from down the road to appease Luke’s desire for dutty carbs. Still amazed we didn’t get Mcds.
It was a pretty early turn in for the both of us that evening with minimal said to each other once the car journey back was over.
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