FIORDLAND QUEST

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21758, 24 March 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

FIORDLAND QUEST

BY KLSIK IC. MORTON

A NEW " WONDER-WALK «

One of the ironies of life is the narrowness of the margin by which wo sometimes almost miss a great experience, a joy so complete that, looking back, it seems incredible wo should have so nearly passed it by, unseeing, unknowing. It was only a chance word from a fellow tramper on the Milford Track last year that opened for mo the portals of Fiordland. Wo had spent a full week on the Sound, had launched and tramped every day, gone to sleep each night in our comfortable beds at the hostel, with the muffled thunder of Bowen in our ears, had waked to the indescribable glory of morning clouds aAd sunshine 011 M it-re Peak and the Lion, and then we had followed the beaten track, one of the loveliest in all the world, over MoKinnon Pass, down to Glade House, at the other end of the Milford walk. Twelve of us came over the track together. It had 'been a wonderful trip. My mind was filled with a confused jumble of magnificent fragments from an unending panorama of loveliness, sky-piercing heights, glaciers, forests, waterfalls, lake and river—but I had missed something, and T could not tell what it was. I wanted to go back over it all again, just to see if I could find it. Before we came off tho track one of our party said, " Go 011 to Manapouri now, and, if you can. get, Leslie Murrell to take you over to Deep Cove, 011 Doubtful Sound. Ho cut a track through ten years ago; it's harder than this, but worth doing."

A few days later we were 011 our way to Deep Cove. Tt was certainly harder, yet there in the great, lonely forests by the Spey River, through the dark, flower-filled beauty of Wilinot Pass, I seemed to be coming ever nearer to that which I sought. Three days in the little remote hut on tho shores of Deep Cove, three days of summer glory 011 the wide, peace-enfolded roaches of the Sound, and then at last I knew what it was I had missed—and by that time wo had to return. Tt was tho spirit of Fiordland I had failed to capture; the every-day world had pressed too close; there had been too little solitude. I had been too comfortable, too near tho beaten track of life. Then said one of tho guides: " Come back and do the new round trip. Tfc's better than this, better even than Milford ! Over a hundred miles, tramping and launching, takes a week, and is mostly through unexplored country." A Year Later A year later I sat once again in a launch speeding up the silvery reaches of Manapouri. I had come back to complete the quest. For a year I had dreamed of tho trip, longed to make it, yet feared that it might somehow fall short of this high expectation. It was only last summer that the track was cut by Fiordland's pioneer pathfinder. Leslie Murrell, who. with the aid of a few volunteer helnors. had slashed a way through nearly thirty miles of practically unexplored forest and mountain country, from Lake Manapouri to Bradshaw Sound. Would this _ new track be difficult for a eitv dweller, I wondered, as the launch sped up tho lake; would there be shelter in the mountains and forests? ... A little wind blew down the surface of the lake, the still waters woke to life and bioko K" golden ripples as the~ sun blazed out from behind a bank of cloud, bringing a sense of exhilaration and eager expectancy.. What did it matter if the track were rough? What did it matter whether we slept under canvas or under the glittering stars — here in the heart of Fiordland there would be freedom, the glory of the mountains, the great peace of untrodden ways! Instead of continuing our way to the head of the lake, where the Deep Cove track starts, the launch turned into the north arm of Manapouri, twenty miles from our starting point, to where the Freeman River comes surging down from the mountains, out of birch-filled ravines, to mingle its crystal waters with those of the great lake. Up the Freeman Valley The launch ran up into the mouth of the river, and we stepned from her deck to a great log, which gave easy access to the white-sanded beach. A few yards up the bank, in a little clearing, wc came to a ncwlv-built, comfortable three-roomed hut, where tho billy was boiled for lunch. Soon after two o'clock we set out on the first stage of our walk, seven and ahalf miles to the Freeman Camp. This first portion of the track ran for miles over a carpet of softest moss, a little winding way that followed the course of the Freeman River, a path of exquisite woodland beauty, shaded by great birch trees, kaimai. black pine, rata, miro, broadleaf, lance, rimu—most of our forest giants of tho north in a new and grander setting. Always in our ears was the music of the river, running over white sands, pausing in deep pools, emerald-rimmed, deepening to the tint of purest jade, so clear that we could see small fish darting about at the bottom. Through a fairyland of ferns and mosses ran the track, with tho strong afternoon sunshine striking down on Id-green ribbons and curtains of moss that fell from the houghs of tho trees and draped every trunk, every stick and stone in that forest wonderland. Across a score of little mountain rills we passed 011 bridges of fallen logs, moss covered, deonly notched, to givo safe foothold. The sides of the valley drew closer; piosently we were in a deep ravine, walled with towering ramparts of gianito, their broken rim grev-whito against the silken blue of the sky, hoary with the passing of the centuries, riven with tho fury of aeons of bitter storms The Damp in the Forest Seven miles up the valley we came tc; one of the novel " bridges " that added a touch of novelty to the walk, a hanging trolley, built of bush saplings, run on parallel wires, with pulleys, that gave smooth running as the tramper sat carefully and was hauled across the Freeman River, foaming and shouting over its rocky bed twenty feet below.

Toward evening a welcome glint of white showed through the forest aisles, the tents of the Freeman camp, on the bank of the river. No slumber beneath the stars, after all! Here was unexpected luxury, wire netting stretchers, beds of dried moss, and silken sleeping bags of lovely blue, with zipp fasteners a yard long! A dip in the river was a ui,,i<| ( 1 i freshener, putting keen edge to an appetite, already whetted by the odour ol one of those delectable dishes that only guides know how to pre pa re—soup, tinned meat, vegetables and dumplings, all boiled together in a billy over a log fire. The boom of a waterfall, dimly seen beneath a thickly-wooded spur on the opposite mountain side, mingled with the song of the river. The last gleam of sunset faded on the rocky heights, the camp fire burned low, and a great peace fell upon the world. . . .

In beds of moss and silk we dreamed of a to-morrow's trail that led on and 011, through endless aisles of greon forest and greener river, to far mountains, whose peaks were lost among the stars.