The Milford Track

The Milford Track is one of New Zealand's most famous and most stunning multi-day hikes (called Tramps). It is a fairly pitiful 33.5 miles over 4 days, and the path is beautifully maintained. Our friends Steve and Sally who live in Melbourne came out to join us for this tramp, and despite numerous injuries, illnesses and general complaints between the lot of us, we survived this relatively easy hike and had an amazing time enjoying the beautiful scenery. The hike is one of New Zealands 'Great Walks' - which means that we had to book our space on the hike several months ahead of time, and stay in the huts (which were very well equipped with mattresses and cooking gas).

Day 1 starts with a boat across from Te Anau and then a short walk through ferns and riverside to Clinton Hut. The first thing we noted was the very flat and manicured path - such a huge difference from Nelson Lakes. As we arrived early, we had the full intention of spending a leisurely few hours at the swimming hole near the hut - however this was quickly curtailed due to freezingness of the water and volume of sandflies - Caroline did a good Jackie'O impression in a headress attempt to protect against the little devils. Later the hut gardian (no longer called wardens as this is too prison like), gave a helpful tour of surrounding flora and fauna.

Day 2 was a pleasant walk as the water turned from green to blue as drew closer to the glaciers and our first views of the McKinnon saddle.

Day 3 was the most impressive (and difficult) day of the hike - in the morning, we made our way up through the forest up over the saddle. As we reached the saddle, the morning mist cleared to reveal a clear view of the valley that we had hiked up the previous day. The views at the top of the saddle were spectacular, and sadly followed by the knee and ankle jerking 1000m (that's about 3000ft) hike back down to the Sutherland waterfall which is New Zealand's highest. Gary braved the drenching route to go round the back of the falls.

Day 4 required an early 5.00am start and a few grumbles from fellow hut occupants as we started off in the dark in order to accomodate our leisurely pace and arrive in time to catch our boat at the Sound. The bonus was seeing the sun rising and the hues on the mountains as the sky turned from red to blue. Second breakfast was at the beatiful Mackay falls, lunch at yet another spectacular falls and we arrived at sandfly point with some bite anticpating nervousness in plenty of time. Fortunately the wind was up and the sandflies we're nowhere to be seen. We finished off the day with a boat tour on Milford Sound, awed by the immensity of the surrounding mountains which plunge at about 70degrees into the water. To get back to Te Anau we took a 2 hour bus journey through further stunning scenery which we only saw in patches between grunts and snores as we all passed out exhausted

Summary - A fabulous walk that has been very well maintained with excellent huts and superb views. Thanks to the limited number of people that can walk the trail each day we were able to see all this in relative solitude and enjoy 4 days without rain, very rare in the 2nd wettest place on earth.