On the Routeburn Track

We have spent the last three days hiking the Routeburn track, starting from Queenstown where we spent the night.

The bus ride was great, with our driver Ali telling us all sorts of info about the local area, which was used for a lot of the locations for "Lord of the Rings". A typical Kiwi, she was down to earth and took the failure of the windscreen wipers in her stride. Luckily we had Keba engineering on hand for running repairs in the lovely little town of Glenorchy.

Ali dropped us at the start of the track and off we went for 3 days hiking, 2 nights in the huts along the way, it's been great. Routeburn is pretty steep in places, we went up to around 1200 metres (I think). The valley is dominated by running water and steep hills.

Here is the first of several dozen suspension bridges we crossed in our travels.

Our second day it rained all day, high winds as we crossed the pass, and despite having all the gear, everyone was soaked!

The scene in the hut that night was amazing, soaking wet gear from 40 trampers all stacked around the pot belly stove. Heaps of coal, the old Kin Kin fire stoking skills came in to play as the night wore on and next morning most of the gear was passable, if not dry. A bundy rum eased the aches and pains.

Our final stage on this track was fantastic, beautiful weather and incredible views of the high mountains and deep river valleys, water crashing out of the rocks all around us.

A long descent to the end of the track and onto the bus for the trip to Te Anua. We have spent the night, regained our energy, and now we are off on the launch to begin the Milford track. 4 days, 3 nights, the forecast is good, with the possibility of snow! Unreal!