A vacation!

Three days on the Routeburn were easy enough that it really felt like a vacation. Okay, maybe not so much the second day when it was pouring rain, but even then we arrived at the hut by 12:30 and had a nice nap after lunch.

Jonas (from Switzerland, who I met on the hike to the French Ridge by Mt. Aspiring) and I happened to both be on the Routeburn at the same time, and since we were hiking at about the same pace, we ended up hiking most of it together. He stayed at the Routeburn Falls Hut on the first night while I stayed at the Routeburn Flats hut, but it's just a couple of km up the trail from the flats, so we joined up again at the falls on the second day.

The Routeburn is only 32 km, so it couuld be done in one or two days by the ambitious hiker, but since I didn't know exactly what the trail would be like, I decided to take the standard amount of time.

Day 1

We started hiking around 2:15 p.m. on a sunny Tuesday, and we arrived at the flats at 3:45. After we had some snacks at the picnic area and Jonas was nearly eaten alive by sandflies, Jonas headed up to the falls and I went for a hike on the trail down the north fork of the Route Burn. In about 3 hours of walking I only saw one other person! It was a nice mix of beech forest and open grasses. The views of the glacier above were delightful.

That night I started chatting with a couple from Whitefish, MT, and it turns out that they're good friends with my friend Tyler Hope! It really is a small world.

I was hoping to use my brand new southern hemisphere star chart to figure out some of the southern constellations that night, but the clouds were starting to roll in...

Day 2
The forecast for Wednesday was "some showers", but in our 4+ hours of hiking, it just rained and rained and rained... Sadly, by the time we arrived at the Lake Mackenzie Hut, both my headlamp and point-and-shoot camera (which were in the pockets of my goretex jacket) no longer worked. The headlamp came back to life, and I'm still holding out a bit of hope that my camera will do the same after it fully dries out.

After some lunch and a nap and some reading (The Fellowship of the Ring), I noticed that it had stopped raining, so I put on my (wet) shoes and tromped up the trail we had come down to see what I could see and to take some pictures. I didn't get all the way up to the Harris Saddle, but I was able to see all the way to Milford Sound once I got up above treeline and had rounded the corner.

After dinner, Jonas and I joined a couple from Australia & Wales for some card games. We played three different games, each from a different person. Good times!

Day 3
It wasn't raining when I woke up, so when Jonas arose, he quickly got ready and we were on the trail in no time, hoping to walk as far as possible without rain. There were showers off and on during our walk to the Howden Hut, but nothing serious, and we were mostly dry when we arrived at Howden at 10:45.

After some coffee (thanks, Jonas) and biscuits (yum), we headed up to the Key Summit and did the self-guided nature walk. We laughed at the supposed view of Lake Marian (we could only see clouds) but had fun identifying some of the plants in our little brochure and learning about the history of the area.

After returning to the Howden Hut and lunching and reading for a bit, it was time for Jonas to head to the end of the trail to catch his bus. I decided to head down the Greenstone/Caples track to see what I could see in that direction. It was a pleasant walk through beech forest and had some nice views of the lake and mountains around there on my way to and from the McKellar hut.

That night there were only three of us staying at Howden, and I certainly learned a lot about sweet-potato farming and hunting from Barry and Shawna Judd, who own a fishing and hunting shop at the north end of the north island. Once again I was impressed by the friendliness of New Zealanders!