The Routeburn Track

DAY 1
Our first day on the track was filled with the excitement of beginning our journey into the wilderness. We had seen miles and miles of forest and hills along the road, but I couldn't wait to get lost amongst the mountains and the trees.

We picked up our bags from Queenstown, packed them full (with mostly food), shipped off our bikes to Te Anau, and hopped on our van to the trail head. The ride out of Queenstown along the lake, into Glenorchy, and beyond was spectacular. The snow capped mountains surrounding the lake were climbing up to the sun-filled sky and the water was glistening in the sun's rays. Ahh - what a day to begin our journey.

As we pulled down a narrow gravel road to the trail head, we could see the sign at the beginning of the Routeburn Track that marked the beginning of our journey. A bus load of guided day walkers were crowding around and taking pictures (our driver calls these people the "wanna-be trampers"). When we hopped off our van, the bus of tourists was leaving and we went up to the sign to take our own set of pictures. Then we strapped our heavy sacks onto our back and were off into the woods. We crossed a swingbridge over a clear roaring river and then began our climb up the mountain, with the river following by our sides. The forest was full of nobby beech trees covered in an arrangement of mosses and green foliage. The air was fresh, the sun was shining, and birds hummed a song for us - we couldn't have had a more perfect day. We hiked on for a couple hours, sharing our excitement and wonder along the way... crossed over a few more swing bridges, wandered along a short side path and back, and stopped in our tracks every once in a while to look all around and take everything in. I think my favorite sight of the day was a vertical slope along the trail that was covered with mounds of elegant grasses. Water poured down this wall and dripped, drizzled, and streamed off the long blades of grass... with the sunlight highlighting these glistening drops of water as they rolled downwards. It was a natural fountain - more beautiful than any fountain I've ever seen.

We eventually came to a clearing in the woods... with a stream running by and a full field of golden grasses. The field was surrounded by green and rocky grey mountains in the distance. Pouring down from the tops of these mountains were a couple long thin waterfalls. We decided to take off our packs, sit down for a snack, and enjoy this view for a bit. When we got back up, ready to tramp onwards, and then saw a sign telling us that our campsite was only 10 minutes further. It turns out that we would be camping on the edge of this field and we enjoyed the beautiful scenery all night. After we set up camp, Mally and I walked back down the path and into the meadow a bit to explore... we met a very friendly and playful bird along the way that hopped and fluttered right in our path... only inches away from our feet. I guess if you don't have any enemies in the woods, giant humans aren't so scary to a bird.

After wandering through the field, we made our way back to our campgrounds for some dinner. We met a Dutch couple about our age, an Australian couple, and a student from Germany. We chatted a bit over our pasta dinner, and as the cool air moved in we talked about making a fire to warm ourselves up. Sounds simple, but it is not so easy to get a fire started in the rain forest... not too much dry fuel nearby. Rex, the Dutch guy said not to worry as he was experienced in making fires. An hour later, the Dutch couple, the Australian couple, the German guy, and I finally got a fire going... it only took some nice fluffy toilet paper, a large chocolate bar wrapper, and a aerosal deoterant "blow-torch". We enjoyed the glowing embers and the bit of warmth as we chatted and told stories around our magnificent creation... and we sent waves of smoke over to Mally as she was enthralled in Harry Potter back at the picnic tables.

Finally, the dark was settling in and my warm sleeping bag was calling. We headed off to bed, crossing our fingers for no rain and hoping for another beautiful day.

DAY 2
We woke up to the pitter patter of rain drops and small puddles coming into our misshapen tent. It took some effort to finally get out of our warm sleeping bags and begin to pack up in the rain. We ran all of our stuff over to the dry shelter of the picnic tables and decided to pack up there . We then made some warm oatmeal and tried to predict our prospects for sun by the clearing in the clouds off to our right (too bad we were heading off to the left). The rain was not all bad... as we enjoyed our oatmeal, we could see that the two waterfalls from the night before now turned into about five waterfalls pouring down the mountains ahead of us. Then, the sun managed to peak through and we were greeted by a huge rainbow right in front of us... its pot of gold only a short walk away. It faded within seconds, but cheered us up with hopes of more sun. By the time we finished breakfast and strapped on our bags, the sky was clearing. I had to stop minutes into our walk to take off my layers of warmth. The rain soon stopped and the sun was peaking through the maze of trees.

The second day's journey led us through more of the beautiful rain forest, past numerous gorgeous waterfalls, and past clearings with views of mountains and distant waterfalls as far as the eyes could see. We then climbed above treeline and started our journey through alpine terrain... fields of green grass mounds, little shrubs of spiralling leaves, and the ocassional tall plant sticking out of the smooth ground covering. The green was also spotted with blips of yellow and white flowers. Our narrow path winded its way along the terrain with water trickling down its rocky route. Shining purples and greens glistened in the path. Out into our view beyond we could see many green mountains, topped with gray rock and white snow, and dotted with long white waterfalls. We also came to a view of a large lake looming in the valley below us. The breathtaking sights were endless. We had to keep stopping to look all around and appreciate our surroundings.

Our weather was as varying as the greens in the terrain. We had sun, then sprinkles, then rain, then sun, then wind, then hail, then sun, then some more rain, and even a bit of snow(!). When we reached the top, the skies had finally turned fully grey and we were ready for a break from the elements and a nice hardy lunch in the shelter before us. We found a spot among the wet and cold trampers in the shelter and pulled out some tortillas, peanut butter, and jelly for our pb&j tortilla rolls... quite a yummy lunch you may say... well... as we began to spread the peanut butter a New Zealand man pointed at us and said is that peanut butter? Yup we replied (he had already laughed at us earlier on the trail for wearing running shoes and at Mally for her dry garbage bag layer... now the peanut butter?) Then I began slopping on the jelly and a women's voice shouted out... "look - she's putting jelly on it!". The whole shelter laughed out - apparently, our lunch was quite the entertainment. The NZ fellow even insisted on getting a picture of our pb&j and running shoes (that should be a good one for the album).

Once the snow had stopped and we had our fill, we decided to brave the rain and grey clouds. We skipped the side trail that climbed to conical point for a brilliant lookout because others said there was no view and we were quite chilly at this point. We began trotting along to keep warm and soon enough we warmed up once more and were on our way heading down the other side of the mountain. Our views were now limited by clouds and at times we could only see feet in front of us... it looked as if we were walking towards the end of the earth... it was quite mystical in a way. We continued through the alpine terrain and passed some more raging waterfalls. Soon we came to a clearing below with a beautiful lake swirling with blues and greens. Off to the side we could see Mackenzie hut and campsite - our home for the night. So we tramped on down the hill along a zigzag path surrounded amongst the fields of green and soon entered the forest once again. The forest seemed enchanted when we entered. Lush green twisted trees sticking out all around... a windy trail over roots and large rocks, and a misty grey background. Even in the rain, the Routeburn is magnificent!

We soon arrived to our campsite where we dumped our bags on the picnic table, shed all our wet clothes (good thing we didn't have company), and put on everything dry and warm that we owned. We then got out our sleeping bags, wrapped ourselves in them, and read Harry Potter on the picnic tables (Mally with her half of the book, and me with the first half cut off). We were content to be warm and dry and stayed there for quite some time reading. Other campers, including our friends from the night before, soon arrived and began setting up camp and cleaning themsleves up. We continued to stay wrapped up in our dry shelter. The thought of getting wet or out of our warm sleeping bag was painful. We managed to make dinner without moving far from our spot and continued to read and chat into the night. After most people headed off to their tents in the rain, we finally decided to set up our damp and droopy tent on the small dry area under the shelter... ahhh - no rain. Unfortunately, we managed to lose our stakes somewhere along the way so we tramped to the hut warden and borrowed some for the night. Right before heading into the tent, we were greeted by a plump, furry possum (yikes!). We made sure to pack all our food tight and sneak around him and quickly into our tent. We heard him wandering about for a bit, but soon drifted off to sleep.

DAY 3
We woke up nice and dry, but it was still cool and raining outside the shelter. We packed up our tent quickly to get out of the way of others making breakfast and packing up. We made some warm oatmeal and then the time came to get out of our warm, dry clothes and into our cool (but now mostly dried off) tramping gear. Mally and I did a quick run around the camp site to warm up before stripping down and changing. People thought we were a bit odd, but at least we warmed up.

We then started on to Howden lake towards the end of the trail, which was only a 3 hours away (and an hour from the trail end). We quickly warmed up by walking with our packs and took our time since we had all day to walk a short way. We stopped to enjoy some magnificent water falls... Earland Falls, was the most spectacular of the day. The fall started 80 meters above us... and poured off a mountain top in one large stream that split to many streams as it made its way down the cliff. We passed so close that we could feel the spray coming off the falls. To see such a sight in the middle of the woods with nothing but spectacular natural scenery all around was like uncovering a hidden treasure. I could have stayed there all day, but we eventually had to move on to keep warm.

Shortly after 1, we arrived to Howden Hut, where we went inside to enjoy another pb&j lunch. Luckily, we were not a spectacle among the crowds today. The hut was initially quite crowded, but soon all the people moved on in the opposite direction or ended up hiking another hour out of the Routeburn. Since Mally and I were getting picked up early the next morning at the trail end, we were here for the rest of the day... the rain continued pitter pattering outside and we were content to stay in the warm dry hut and read some more Harry Potter. I also pulled out my freeze dried ice cream sundae to give it a try... (I couldn't pass it up at the camping store... 4 days without ice cream is a long time) I added the cold water and stirred as the directions told me and then waited for my treat to gel. I knew that this wouldn't compare to B&J's or JP Licks, but after 3 days of tramping it couldn't be too bad... or could it. I gave the "treat" a try and was horrified that they associated such a thing with the name ice cream. I couldn't even finish it - I had to pack it up and put it in my garbage bag to tramp out with the next day.

Soon, we had a few people join us in the hut... they were amused by our cut in half Harry Potter book... and provided some nice conversation... two folks were from Australia and were excited about our itinerary to Tasmania... they also told us not to worry about the snakes (ha!) and gave us some of their close encounter stories. Another fellow was from Oxford, England and was travelling the world to different golf tours with the pro he caddies for. He decided to take his week off to walk around some more in NZ.

As it became later, we shared our woes... of having to go back outside and set up our tent, of having no tent stakes, of having a broken pole, of having to get up at 5 to catch our ride for our kayaking trip but having no alarm (we realized along the Routeburn that the watch no longer has sound... oops)... we also shared our plan of drinking lots of water so we would wake up and then take turns staying awake 'til 5. Our stories were quite amusing for all... After making dinner, we set out to deal with our situation. Although everyone told us to stay in the cabin area and sleep in the kitchen (you had to reserve and pay a high price for the hut), we set back outside... the rain had stopped now... hopefully it wouldn't be so bad. The tent site was 20 minutes away so we hiked down the Greenstone trail a bit before arriving to our resting spot. There we set up our tent and staked it out with sticks and twigs, and tied the cover out using ferns, grasses, and more sticks. We had quite the set-up in the end. We also had quite the view. We were set up in a field with trees all around on one side and mountains in close view on the other side. We rolled out our sleeping bags, drank lots of water, and dozed off to sleep.

DAY 4
Well... the plan worked... Mally woke up around 2:30 having to go to the bathroom. We then took shifts staying awake and reading until we had to get up at 5. 5 rolled around and it was still pitch dark out, but luckily it was no longer raining and not too cold. We broke out the headlamps, took down our stick stakes and fern/grass ropes, and packed up quickly. We then set out on the dark path out of the Routeburn.

It was actually quite nice walking in the dark. We had to stick our heads down to the path, but the other senses became so clear. I could hear every little sound... small streams crossing our path seemed like roaring rivers... the cool breeze blowing through the trees filled the air with a purr of rustling leaves. It was a whole new hiking experience... and a wonderful one. As we walked along, we experienced the forest waking up... the darkness slowly began to lift, we could hear the birds stretch and sing their first song, and the morning dew showered us as we walked passed low hanging branches. We caught a few glimpses of the mountains off in the distance, walked passed a couple last wonderful waterfalls, and were followed by a few white butterflies flapping their wings all around us. We walked mostly in silence enjoying our last jaunt on the trail. Soon we came to the end of the Routeburn Track... a small sadness came over me that we were finished, but the delight of the Routeburn will stay with me for a long time.