Popular Milford Track offers rewarding experiences

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33442, 25 January 1974, Page 15

Popular Milford Track offers rewarding experiences

Bi

KEN COATES

Judging by the popularity of this year’s Milford Track season, when parties of 10 were leaving Te Anau every day during the busiest time, more people want to tramp into the country they see from tour buses. Many families are making the trek and it is estimated more than 3000 people will have walked the track this season. And in these days of suburban isolation, half a dozen days of living and walking with people from a crosssection of the community, and from other countries, <an be an enriching experience. Take the party of which we were members, as a family group — three lawyers, advertising man. airline pilot, businessmen, housewives. carpenter, hairdresser, farmer, university lecturer, accountant, clerk, typists, shopgirls, biochemist, mechanic. teacher aYid a dozen children and young people. Seldom in these days do you get such a group together swapping ideas and views for days on end. The purists tramp in this area as “freedom walkers" Using Fiordland National Park Board huts and carrying their own food and Sleeping bags. Not a stroll Not all are as seasoned as they look. We met one young man in a lather of perspiration toiling up the track to MacKinnon Pass carrying a bulging pack weighing 701 b. The package trips offered by the Government Tourist Bureau and the Tourist Hotel Corporation are perhaps plush by comparison (they cost $73 per adult for the six-day trip and $37 for children), but make no mistake, it is no tourist stroll. The glossy brochures make mention of quite elderly adults walking the track, and somewhere there is an account of 90-year-old Mr Alex Adam, of Invercargill, walking the 33 miles. But not everyone’s grandmother could make the distance. and even for a person “normally active and reasonably fit," the terms used in the publicity, the walk is taxing enough and in places quite rough. But there is a gentle introduction to walkers issued with unfamiliar green packs and plastic capes for the rain. The first day is a piece of cake — a good confidence booster. After a bus-ride up to Te Anau Downs there is a short launch trip to the head of Lake Te Anau. Here the track appears as a wide smooth pathway through the bush, and it is a half-mile stroll to Glade House. A genial guide holds the screen door (to keep the devilish sandflies out) open as walkers file in. Bunk rooms are located and it is soon meal time — candles on the tables and chicken cooked on a huge coal range. There ■ is a talk from ranger Phil Turnbull (he and his wife run the hut during the season and live in Te Anau during the winter). Phil loves the bush and is knowledgeable about trees and native plants. He has a genial, friendly way with people. Confidence is high the following morning on the beginning of the 10-mile trek to Pompolona Huts. Numbing water For the kids, of course, it is a glorious race on all sections of the track, although some dash themselves out early. The track follows the crystal-clear Clinton River in which you can see the sleek trout which anglers from the States come to catch — just in this river.

At one spot, what looks like an ideal, sandy-bot-tomed swimming pool entices hot trampers into the

river. But only for a few numbing moments. The guide has seen it all before and grins. The temperature of the snow-fed

river hardly varies between winter and summer he says.

There’s a stop for lunch — tea brewed in a hut and sandwiches issued earlier at Glade House. It happened to be New

Year’s Eve when the party arrived at Pompolona Huts. There’s an uphill stretch just before the huts, presumably to initiate walkers for the next day’s climb. In the men’s bunkroom, and the women’s too, there was quite an astonishing variety of bottled-cheer produced from the inner recesses of packs. The New ear Ten miles covered and 23 to go, with all the best for 1974. It was an optimistic and jubilant party — there was even talk of seeing in the New Year. But after a meal and colour slides of what could be expected on tomorrow’s 91mile trek up and over the pass, the New Year saw itself in — to the tune of steady rain, as it can only fall in Fiordland, and snoring, exhausted trampers. It was still teeming next morning, and the river below the huts was a roaring torrent. No movement on the track, we were told, because the party ahead of us could not get out of their hut because of a flooded track.

There was talk of crossing the pass later, and doubling up with the next party. Then, after the manner of the Army, the order to move came about mid-morning, and the walkers gladly put down cards, chessboards and darts to set off in the rain. It was easing, and the river had fallen two feet since 8 o’clock. Led by guide Roye Hammond, a superbly fit man with an almost spiritual sense of appreciation of the mountains, the party sloshed its way along the track, through swollen streams and in places ankle-deep mud. But the thousands of waterfalls that screened the sheer walls of the valley more than compensated for the discomfort of wet feet. Top of the Pass Here and there along the Milford Track is a facility found nowhere else in the country. A cup stands beside a crystal-clear mountain stream', ready for any thirsty tramper who wants to drink deep without fear of polluted waters. It was one of those rare days when rain ceased and a cloudless day of hot sunshine followed. The climb to the top of the MacKinnon Pass sorts the men from the boys. the view from the top made it worthwhile and there was the awe-inspiring v iew of an avalanche from a glacier across the valley thrown in.

The thoughtful track staff had a young man stationed in a shelter making innumerable cups of tea. The keas are fat, lazy and tour-ist-conscious. It was downhill at least all the way to Quintin Hut; the track in places is little more than the bed of a mountain stream.

The party eventually straggled down to the Quintin Hut threatened early last year by a huge landslip. By this, time, the party ahead had all left; some were flown out. others, independent Kiwis, (we found out later) had waded through the swollen creek,

against the ranger's advice, determined to complete their walk and scorning a flight to Milford. From Poland The celebrated Sutherland Falls is only a mile or so from this hut, and well worth making the extra effort to see. Quintin, so named after the pioneer track discoverer, Quintin MacKinnon, is the headquarters of Polish guide Zygmunt Kepka. A bearded man of the mountains, Zyg., as he is known to everyone, is a sensitive photographer, who likes to show his colour slides of birds, mountains and bush to the appreciative. He so impressed an English publisher making the Milford walk, that a book is to be published soon consisting mainly of his photographs.

Each hut has hot showers and reasonably comfortable bunks. Walkers carry “tracksheets,” a curious envelope type of sheet which has a facility for getting tangled around the human body like a shroud. The food is good, considering the remote location of the huts — even a ravenous teen-ager can get a second helping if he is quick. The final leg of the journey is perhaps the toughest — 131 miles from Quintin Hut to" Sandfly Point where a launch carries the party the final two miles across the head of Milford Sound. Packs can be flown out from Quintin Airstrip, but there has to be at least 15 willing to pay and an insufficient number of our party wanted to give up carrying their bundles,

seeing they had humped them this far. Incidentally, the sandflies can be savage, but they aren’t as bad as the worst stories told about them, provided you use insect repellant. Well worth it It is perhaps a reflection of our age that few of us aren’t fit enough to enjoy such a trek as much as we should. One man adopted the procedure of getting quietly sloshed every evening and was asleep by amout 8.30 p.m. Most were enthusiastic, especially the New Zealanders. An Auckland lawyer said he had not once thought about his work during the five days involved — a rare occurrence for him, he added. A housewife and teacher said in spite of the suffering of muscles unaccustomed to the exercise, and a blister or two, she felt exhilarated and uplifted at having completed the walk.

Two young men from Darwin said they would not have missed it for anything. And an American couple said it was all they expected and more.

The Milford Track to too many New Zealanders remains as something we would like to “do” some day. It is well worth the effort and the money involved in the “doing.”