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Milford Track, New Zealand
Under the rocks and stones there is water underground
The Milford Track, a subject you will read a lot about for the next three pages or so. A thirty three and a half mile track (or trail, as we say in North America) connecting Lake Te Anu with the Milford Sound. The track winds through temperate rain forests and traverses the Southern Alps through the terribly remote Fiordland National Park, with all the advantages (and minor inconveniences) such remoteness would be expected to afford. New Zealand tightly controls access to the Track, a limit of eighty hikers are allowed to begin the track every day, one way only. Forty hikers are independent, forty hikers are with a guided group. I chose the guided group, the one that came with hot showers, drying rooms and (mostly) institutional meals.
The start of the track experience (if you don't count orientation, lunch and a two hour bus ride from Queenstown) is this, the boat ride from Te Anu Downs to the trailhead near Glade House.
A suspension bridge (or two), one of many on the extraordinarily well maintained trail. Most had a pleasant bounce while crossing unbelievably clear (and cold) glacial streams.
A slight diversion from the track, early on the second day, where the arbitrary curves of a boardwalk somehow feel less than arbitrary.
I can remember years ago (1992 actually), watching old Rand McNally videotapes before my first visit to Glacier National Park in Montana. Distinctively I remember the narrator warning me not to drink the water. It may look crystal clear but if you drink any you will surely contract giardiasis and you will be royally screwed (ok, I may be paraphrasing a little here, but it was ten years ago). With this entrenched in my subconscious I had great difficulty believing my well meaning guides the first time they said it was ok to drink the water. It's 99.9 percent pure they said. Its the same stuff that comes out of the tap at the lodges they said. Drink it, it won't hurt you they said. Stop your whining, shut up and just drink the damn water they finally said.
As you all (probably) know, I can drink a lot of water if challenged. A place with an unending supply of extraordinarily good, cold, pure water may be as close to the promised land as I may ever be lucky enough to see.
99.9 percent pure you say? Does that include the breeding sandflies and that fish over there? Where's my lawyer...
The Milford Track crosses a windy, harsh mountain pass with temperate rain forests on both sides. Every imaginable shade of green and every type of waterfall, from dripping through thundering surrounded the Track. The Milford Sound is yet another place I have visited (Kauai and the Hoh Rain Forest in Washington State) that claims to be the world's rainiest. With this in mind I came over prepared. Other than my waterproof Lowa Sarek GT boots, I brought Gore-Tex pants, a Gore-Tex jacket, a Gore-Tex cover for my Lowe Alpine backpack and my well tested waterproof camera (no Gore-Tex there).
Keas. Other than the legendary, persistent sandflies and the legendary (but you'll never actual see one) Kiwi birds, the legendary, persistent keas are the most famous Track citizens. Usually called cheeky (which it turns out doesn't mean mischievous as much as it means destructive), the Kea is an alpine parrot who likes to steal and vandalize things and in its spare time to make enough noise to remind track goers that bringing earplugs to wear at night was in fact a good idea after all.
