direct route, walking from the town of Te Anau to Milford Sound. It’s one of New Zealand’s “Great Walks” and one of the worlds top walks as well. It consists of walking up a river valley, up and over a mountain pass, then down another river valley into Milford Sound. Sound easy enough…Day One:
A warm up walk. We met the 2:00 boat and started walking the trail by 3:30. It was only 90 minutes or so to the first overnight hut. The packs are always heavier on day one, food for four days and a few luxuries like a small box of wine for the first night’s dinner. As it was Thanksgiving Day back home, we also broke out the pumpkin soup to accompany our grilled cheese sandwiches. No complaints – cheese stays fresh for a day or two and is a good menu addition to any long tramp (that’s what the Kiwis call hiking... tramping).
Day Two:
Really moving the legs now. We begin by 7:45 AM and arrived to the hut a bit after 2:00 PM. We still can’t believe our luck: with 300 plus days of rain each year in Milford Sound area, two days of perfectly blue skies felt unreal to us. We were prepared for the worst, but happy to instead lie in the hot sun in this immense valley. One nice touch is that we realized there was no need to boil drinking water as the rivers coming down the mountain were crystal clear and there was no problem filling bottles right from the river.
Day Three:
A full day’s work: Leave at 8:00 AM, up and over Mackinnon Pass, and into the next hut by 5:00 PM. See photo with tuft of cloud over middle part of mountain… that’s Mackinnon Pass.
Milford lived up to its reputation that day as the sky clouded over and the rain came. It was cold and windy up top, but the rain was comparably light (we heard Milford got 250 centimeters of rain in 10 hours the week prior -- about one inch per hour). After a walk down the incredibly scenic pass it felt like we were in a Lord Of The Rings adventure. (find photo)
We took a 90-minute side trip to Sutherland Falls, the highest in New Zealand. Since we hadn’t had a true Milford soaking yet, this provided a nice opportunity. The picture barely shows Jim and his hiking mate from NewCastle walking behind the waterfall. They were as wet as if they had just jumped in the river.
Day Four:
Feeling like we could do anything for one last day, the 5.5 hour walk seemed very reasonable. With the forecast for rain, another completely dry day was a pleasant surprise. We passed many chest-high markers on the sides of the path with arrows to the next marker. We quickly realized that these are to identify the path for days with major rainfalls and flooding, and felt even more fortunate with the weather after seeing those markers.
A boat was there at the finish of that track on the aptly named Sandfly Point. It took us to the Milford Sound wharf where up to 500,000 people come to tour the sounds annually and for good reason. The cold drink and hot shower felt as good as any we’d ever had. And thankfully, the legs didn’t get really sore until we were done walking. We also realized that we finished the tramp on December 1st, exactly one year from when we left Minnesota driving through the season’s first snowstorm.
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