ADVENTURE OF THE MONTH—JULY, 2005

MILFORD TRACK — "THE FINEST WALK IN THE WORLD"

        "Yeeeeeeoooooooowwwww!" That was me in New Zealand last March doing my best Howard Dean primal scream while falling backward into a ditch. A huge spider had almost killed me.

        Well, not exactly. This was my third—and last—day on the Milford Track, New Zealand’s gold standard long-distance hike that shows up on the must-do lists of walkers world-wide. This last day wasn’t the steepest day on the Track (that was yesterday when we went up and over Mackinnon Pass with a total altitude change of nearly a mile), but at 13 miles it was the longest. My two heal blisters notwithstanding, day 3 seemed a relatively easy walk in the park.

        Make that New Zealand’s Fiordland National Park. In a country with more national parks than cities, Fiordland is New Zealand’s largest national park, and, arguably, its biggest tourist draw, best advertisement, and greatest treasure. Covering almost 3 million acres of convoluted land on the southwestern corner of New Zealand’s South Island, Fiordland is mixture of glacier-carved deepwater fiords that fill remote valleys between snowcapped mountains. The terrain is made more remarkable by its remoteness (nearest major neighbors: southeastern Australia and Antarctica), the uniqueness of its plant and animal life (giant prehistoric fern trees; parrots and penguins in the same habitat), and its amazing rainfall (up to 29 feet per year!). Fiordland’s uniqueness stands out in a country full of remarkable regions. So astounding is Fiordland that it has been designated a United Nations World Heritage Area.

        Wondrous Fiordland draws ‘em like flies. Make that like sandflies. Sandflies are the park’s only predator of human flesh and blood. There are no snakes, no lizards, no foxes, no wolves, no tigers, no bears. The only big mammals here were imported for hunting: elk and red deer. No sheep or cows or horses, either, inside of the park. There are stoats (think weasel) and Australian possums (think a marsupial that looks like a squirrel/raccoon hybrid) that have found Fiordland a paradise where food is plentiful and enemies few. The prey for these 3 introduced predators is, sadly, a threatened natural population of unique birds, including New Zealand’s national symbol, the flightless, hairy-feathered, long-beaked kiwi.

        And, oh yes, there’s the occasional spider. After two days in the New Zealand wilderness I had been lulled into a false security that the Milford Track penetrated a benign rainforest, full of the exotic cries of jungle birds. Tuis are the best known, if only because they help sell a popular North Island beer of the same name. Bush robins—haven’t they heard about the stoats?—were so friendly they would hop up to my boots thinking my laces must be fat worms. As for kiwis—well, I’ve been to New Zealand many times, and kiwis remain only a nocturnal rumor. It was easy finding the world’s only alpine parrot, the kea—it finds you. They wait near the lodges spaced along the Milford Track. When you arrive and hit the showers, they go to work, looking for the boots, clothing or knapsack left outside the cabins by unsuspecting or careless hikers. The kea—with the height and weight of a middling penguin—hops furtively sideways to stalk and ransack anything made of leather or that might contain a possible kea snack. Duck, nylon, leather, and, probably, Kevlar, are no match for the scimitar beak of the hungry, mischievous kea. My sense is that a kea’s culinary preferences are as unrefined as those of a billy goat. This trickster must be equipped with a cast-iron stomach. Unlike penguins and goats, however, keas can fly a little.

        Flying? We were flying along the immaculately groomed, spongy trail, making fast tracks for the 33.5-mile post, the finish line of the Milford Track at Sandfly Point. My companion was a 30-ish Aussie from Sydney, fit but new to long-distance trekking. Nick had left his fiancι at home in Oz, knowing that she wasn’t the type to put up with three days slogging through one of the wettest places on earth, while having to rough it for four nights in crude hikers’ huts with communal toilets, cold showers, and inedible food. Now, two-and-half days and three nights into it, Nick knew he had made a mistake. The weather had been perfectly dry, and each day offered sunny skies with low billowy cumulus clouds that reminded you the ocean was not far away. Claire, his fiancι, wouldn’t have minded the flat sections that characterized Days 1 and 3, a total of 23 of the 33.5 total miles of the Milford. On both sides of the divide the track is a dream—mossy soft, four to five feet wide, and ditched to the right and the left to handle the drainage of heavy rains expected more than 200 days each year. Claire would have found Day 2’s big climb across Mackinnon Pass challenging. This day the path is moderately steep, rocky, rooty, and, beyond the lower beech forest to the pass well above tree line (at about 3,300’ altitude), a narrow (2-feet and less) cutting through dense gorse, bracken, and scrub. Claire might have complained about the 4-hour climb to the pass, but she would have been thrilled by the views of snowcapped mountains and the steep-sided mini-Yosemite Valleys that reward you at the top. The descent from Mackinnon Pass is steeper and hard on tired legs—especially the knees. But once back in the forest the trail becomes a boardwalk tracing a fabulous set of cascading waterfalls that have scoured and polished the granite of these mountains into smoothly rounded kettles and funnels reminiscent of Henry Moore sculptures.

        Nick really knew he had got it wrong when the finish of each day’s trek led to a comfortable, well-equipped lodge. Grab a shower, wash and hang your sweaties, then limp down to happy hour in the lounge, and the finest 3-course meals imaginable this far in the wilderness featuring a choice of two entrιes daily, with soup, salad, and dessert. Beer, wine, and canned soft drinks are the only extra-cost extras. The New Zealand beer was good, if a little warm due to limited refrigeration. The disappointment was the wine. New Zealand produces some world class wines of both colors. The stuff sold by the glass or by the bottle at the lodges was uniformly bad. The Aussies, Yanks, Brits, and Europeans on the walk drank it, but only the Kiwis seemed to drink it to excess. I was puzzled by the wine’s inferiority, but happy not to be hung over on any marching day.

        Hot showers? Yep—all the hot water you want. Private toilets? Yes, spic ’n span lockable stalls, flush porcelain fixtures, and, thankfully, air fresheners and splinter-free TP. Rooms? Bunkhouse style dormitories (no mixed genders) with kids’ camp mattresses, blankets and pillows. For couples, higher rollers, and other privacy-challenged hikers, lodges offer a limited number of private rooms with private bathrooms and showers, but for a not-meaningless supplemental charge.

        In all cases, hikers must carry a sleep sheet—a polyester cocoon that supposedly separates bodies from blankets, pillows, and mattresses. Not if you’re 6’1". Hikers also need to carry a pack with a change of clothing or two, a wash cloth, hut shoes or sandals, small digital camera, sun block, sun glasses, a hat, gloves, a heavy fleece, and, importantly, raingear. Total pack weight: 25lbs. unless you are like me and carry a heavy camera rig and collapsible tripod or monopod. We were advised to leave our toiletries (supplied at lodges), cotton clothing (heavy and heat-sapping when wet), and make-up (lipstick in the jungle? For whom, Tarzan?) home. Most hikers complied with suggestions one and two. Not one woman—there were 23 women in our group of 50—took suggestion three and left the make-up home.

        If Claire had come along, Nick would have had much better company for 3 days and 4 nights in paradise than me. But he probably would not have laughed as hard. He laughed at me when I twice swam in icy waters—once a waterfall-fed pond by the edge of a cliff, and once in a crystal clear creek still swollen by the previous week’s record rains. We all laughed when a group of tiny women—prize winners of this trip from their company back in Japan—donned raincoats and paraded like ducklings into the roaring, frigid mists of the world’s fifth highest waterfall, Sutherland Falls. They were the only ones to use their raingear from our group. Ranging in age from 40-65, these little wan women seemed vastly out of place in the adventure in Big Nature. Still, they accomplished each day in good time, if always bringing up the rear with the last guide in tow arriving an hour or so after a fast group of young Aussies from a car dealership was already on its fourth beer each in the lodge lounge.

        I don’t know if the laughter would have been less if the weather had been wet. The climb across 3,500’ high Mackinnon Pass would have been much more difficult in a driving, cold rain, or in snow—possible at any time of year. Certainly my encounter with the spider would have been different in the heavy rains the Milford Track expects more than half the time. It was the middle of the third day when Nick and I were making a final push to reach the 2PM boat at Sandfly Point. We wanted to get to Mitre Peak Lodge at Milford Sound as early as possible, before they ran out of ice cold beer. We had already streaked past the Japanese ladies, and a group of 4 or so New Zealand couples who were taking their time. At the lunch stop we passed the Brits (from London, Wales, and Yorkshire), some other Americans (a couple of lawyers from DC, and a couple of doctors from MN), a terrific couple from South Africa via Australia, a nifty senior (oldest in our group) from South Africa via Switzerland, two French Canadian couples (one via New Caledonia), and several Aussies. Only the Aussie car dealers were between us and being first to Sandfly Point. It was a race for hot showers and cold beer.

        Nick has 25 years on me, and he was in the lead. But I had my trusty hiking poles out and was digging in, letting my arms propel at least 25% of my weight. Head down, I leaned into the poles, pressing their points into the mossy loam of the Milford Track. We were certainly doing 5mph. On a winding section, when I looked up to get my bearings there it was, dangling in front of me at eye level, big a my fist, and hairy, and suspended by a single thread attached to some overhead branch or frond.

        The poles dug in. My blistered heals dug in. The brakes went on. But I was top-heavy with a pack full of camera gear. "Yeeeeeeoooooooowwwww!" That was my primal scream while falling backward into the ditch.

        Nick turned, pale as a ghost, and raced back to find me flat on my backpack, convulsing in the dry but remarkably soft, lichen-filled ditch, convulsing with laughter. Nick thought the old man had had a high-speed heart attack. He hadn’t seen the spider. I’m not sure he believed by story about seeing the spider, something not expected, not even rumored, something as rare as a kiwi or rain on the Milford Track.

LEARN HOW TO WALK THE MILFORD TRACK ON PAGE 2

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