Day 10: Milford Track Start to Clinton Hut

Our tramp (hike) started with a one hour ferry ride across Lake Te Anau.  We were surrounded by spectacular views that gave us the first tastes of what was to come.  Unlike our lakes in the U.S., Lake Te Anau is pristine.  It's not surrounded by docks and houses or covered with motor boats pulling skiers.  Everything looks pretty much the way it did when the Islands of New Zealand were first pushed up out of the sea.

Our track is located in the fjordland on the south west side of the New Zealand's south island.  This area of the country is covered with dense, tropical forest nestled in valleys that are surrounded by sharp peaks.  These valleys and peaks were carved out of the earth by the movements of glaciers through the terrain as they melted and eventually disappeared.  Our track took us over 33.5 miles to the Milford Sound.

Day one of our hike was a short three miles to the Clinton Hut.  Now you can't just hop on the Milford Track 'cause you woke up one day feeling like you might want to hike 33.5 miles that day.  Only 80 hikers (40 guided and 40 independent) per day are allowed to start the track each day and those spots are booked up to a year in advance.  We reserved our spots as independent trampers (hikers) and thus, our accommodations were a bit rustic and we were required to bring our own food.  (Guided trampers pay around $1500 for three hot meals and hotel like conditions at each of their huts.  Our bill wasn't quite as steep.)

Now, by no means, don't think we were sleeping in tents and eating freeze dried meals for 3 nights.  The independent huts provide luxury camping by my standards.  All I had to carry in was food, clothes and sleeping bag.  Each hut has a bunk room, so I was sleeping on a padded bed.  We also had a cooking area with stoves, so no need to carry in fuel or a stove!  And here's the best part, there are BATHROOMS at each of these huts!  I had the use of toilets for all four days of our hike!!!  Can't believe it!  Even on the trail, you could expect to run across a toilet every three miles ... no peeing behind a bush followed by drip drying!  Wahoo!

As for food, we had a pretty fancy menu by camping standards.  Burritos on the first night, chicken curry on the second and tuna pasta on the third.  Yummy!  The last major thing we had to take into consideration was the water situation.  Typically, we either filter our water or boil it.  But not on the Milford Track.  This is the first time in my life that we could drink water directly from the stream.  And this place is covered with streams.  And the water is so amazingly clear.  I've never seen anything like it in my life.  The pictures will never do it justice.  We eventually got to a point where we didn't carry water.  When we got thirsty, we would just stop at the next stream crossing and fill up a bottle and take a drink.  And for those of you who have never backpacked, carrying water adds so much weight to your pack.  If you can get away with NOT carrying your water, you've been blessed.

Our hike on the first day took us over swing bridges, past more dense bush (forest) and gave us our introduction to the dreaded sand-fly.  Up until this point, we had not been formally introduced to this horrible New Zealand pest.  Brian and I did not encounter them at all on the North Island.  So what is a sand-fly, you ask?  OMG ... this little creature is best described as a flying flea with a bite that produces the same effect as a mosquito and the itching lingers for days on end!  Sand-flies congregate around moving water and swarm any living creature who is at rest.  This means that as long as you are moving, you are okay.  It was great incentive to continue hiking when your feet are worn out, your pack is too heavy and your muscles refuse to propel you one more inch forward.  We were told that a good breeze helps keep them away (mostly true) and that we would not find them at higher elevations (not so true, as we encountered them at the top of the pass).

Our hike on the first day covered mostly flat ground and followed a river.  It didn't take us much more than an hour to reach our first hut.  Once we settled in, we met a few of our fellow trampers.  It's a good idea to make nice with the people you're going to hear you snore for the next three nights.  The majority of our group was made up of German students from a university in Hamburg.  The remaining people were ourselves, a Canadian couple (Andrew and Maegan), the Belgians, the Floridians (David and Lauren), the German NOT with the students (Harold), the Kiwi sisters and Hal, another Kiwi.  (New Zealanders are called Kiwi.)

After dinner, Ross, the ranger for our hut came in for our "hut talk."  Basically, the hut talk is supposed to let you know about track conditions for the next day, emergency instructions should someone decide to burn down the hut and a brief track description.  Ross, however, was a bit long winded.  He gave a very detailed blow by blow track description, as well as a full report of ever bit of wildlife we would encounter for ever mile of our journey and eventually gave us some useful information about what we could expect in case of a fire.  After the first 15 minutes, it all sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher with the words "blue duck" interjected on occasion.  Ross sure was a character.  One really cool thing he did was tell us about where we could find glow worms on the trail.  Once he finally finished his "hut talk," we all headed out to the trail to see the glow worms.  So glad that Dave, Angela and Laurent got to see them after Brian and I had told them just how cool our glow worm cave tour was on the North Island.

After that, we all headed off to find our ear plugs and fall asleep!