Month: January 2009

The Southern Alps meet the sea along the west coast of New Zealand’s south island, and the resulting landscape can be spectacular. Such is the case at Milford Sound. The soaring mountains abruptly meet the sea. Mitre Peak rises just over a mile high straight out of the water.

Milford Sound gets an unbelievable 6+ meters of rain a year. Even Portland doesn’t reach even a single meter. It’s the second rainiest place on the planet. Waterfalls emerge from everywhere. As you can see though, our run of good weather continued. Another fine day for a 2-hour cruise.

As we reached the opening of the sound to the sea, we were met by a thick blanket of clouds.

Here’s a look back into the Sound and its blue sky.

From the ocean, you can’t really see the opening to the Sound. Captain Cook marked this as a Bay in his log and never discovered the Sound.

With the extreme rainfall, the Sound has a layer of silty (dark) freshwater on its surface. The lack of light fools marine life into thinking the water is much deeper than it is. Many sea creatures normally found only miles deep are relatively near the surface here. Along with Doubtful Sound a bit up the coast, it’s the only place on the planet with this phenomenon.

We snapped a few parting shots of the Southern Alps as we drove back to Queenstown.

Day 3 was an easy day, all downhill. We had less than four hours of hiking to get through before meeting our 2 pm bus pickup. We started back into the forest heading towards the Routeburn Flats. About half way down, we came to a “slip” that crossed the trail. Heavy rains in 1994 had caused a landslide that opened up some great views.

We got to navigate six swinging bridges on Day 3.

We broke for lunch at the Flats and had a guest photographer snap one of us.

Here’s a look back up at the Routeburn. Unfortunately, there’s only a sliver of the falls visible from the Flats.

A view downstream; different waterfall.

After the Flats, the Routeburn tumbles towards the next valley.

A glimpse of the next valley as we neared the end of the Track.

A parting shot at the finish!

Sleeping in a hut shared with 40 people isn’t the greatest, especially with the inevitable chorus of a few snorers. But as we stirred and started out of our bunks, an excited hiker asked if we’d been outside yet. No, not yet. He then gushed that the day was fine and perfect. Sure enough, bright blue skies greeted us.

We hit the trail after a breakfast of porridge (that’s oatmeal to us). I’d noticed the night before that the swollen lake was spilling over the trail for about a 100 meters about 200 meters from the hut. We stayed in our flip flops for that in the hope that the trail would stay dry and give our shoes — still a bit damp from the day before — a chance to dry out. The water was cold as expected, and got close to 2 feet deep in parts. It was a good move — we started uphill soon after and had dry feet all day. I made Leena take a picture of me as we climbed just to prove that I too carried some stuff. (And good thing I brought a running fleece to be highly reflective on the trail…)

After climbing most of the first hour, the trail abruptly broke out of the forest and above the tree line. It was like coming out of a tunnel.

A look back down at McKenzie Lake — you can see the roof of the Hut just left of center at the bottom of the frame.

After an hour and a half, we came around a 270 degree corner with awesome views in every direction. We’d finished the bulk of the days climbing.

We had a decent view for our picnic lunch. Leena soon after…

We reached the Harris Saddle just past noon. It’s essentially the midpoint of the track and the high point as well. There’s a side trail up Conical Hill. I left my pack with Leena at the emergency shelter and scrambled up another 700 vertical feet. A shot looking up at the top — very steep trail!

On this perfect, fine day, the views were spectacular. In the distance you could see all the way to the Tasman Sea. The small white horizontal line in the middle of the frame is the surf breaking on the beach.

The view back to the east.

Glacier fed lake as we headed on from the Harris Saddle. The Routeburn river tumbles out of the lower end of this lake.

The trail passed a huge boulder left behind by a glacier. Note that the trail goes through the opening at the bottom right of the frame. To give you an idea of the size of the rock, no, I didn’t have to duck to get through…

After hiking down for most of two hours, we got our first view of the Routeburn flats. Between us and the flats is 900 vertical meters of cascades and waterfalls.

We stayed for night two at the Routeburn Falls Hut, situated right at the tree line just below the first series of waterfalls. A view from the “back yard”.

Feeling a bit hot and, uh, sweaty, I took a dip in the falls. Sourced mainly from glacier runoff, the water was just a bit cold!

A view from the “front porch” of the Hut as night decends. Since we near the 45th parallel (south!) in summer, night came really late — this shot was taken right at 22:00. Interesting that Portland is just north of the 45th parallel in this hemisphere.

Wow. The Routeburn Track was the highlight of the trip. It’s a 32 or 39 km trail (we’ve seen conflicting info on the length) through New Zealand’s Southern Alps. It’s typically done over 3 days and 2 nights (our approach), though some folks run it in a single day (the record is 2:48!). There are bunk houses with beds and mattress pads to stay in at night with separate communal cabins with water, gas stoves and tables. A bit of a step up for us “car campers”, but not as tough as pure backpacking which would include hauling a tent, pad, stove and much more water.

We started Day 1 with an 8am pickup in Queenstown and a 3 1/2 hour drive to the Divide. The Divide is the lowest crossing point of New Zealand’s Southern Alps and the West end of the Track. The driver on the way out was full of great information. For starters, this was the 14th straight day of rain on the track, and he told us to expect to see some unhappy folks at the Divide waiting to be picked up (you can walk the track in either direction). He seemed a bit concerned about us as he dropped us off. Have you done anything like this before? Do you have rain gear? As he left, he gave us four throat lozenges. How nice.

It was a steady rain for the whole drive down, and the sky got darker and darker as we approached the Divide. Good times! Upon arrival we noted that there indeed were 15 or 20 very wet and not so cheerful backpackers waiting to be picked up. We bundled up in our rain gear, loaded up the packs, and got ready to go.

With all the rain, there were creeks and waterfalls everywhere. The path itself served as a creek bed quite often. Waterfalls tumbled across.

After a wet first hour, we came to Lake Howden. The skies cleared for a bit. There’s a hut at the lake, so we unloaded and enjoyed some lunch.

Soon after Lake Howden, we came to the Key Summit side trail. It’s a one-hour return hike to a summit (of course), but we passed. We were barely below cloud level as it was, so no great views to be had.

Another hour in was Earland Falls, a 178 meter waterfall. The path crosses the falls just a few meters from the base of the falls. The waterfall seemed to flow straight out of the clouds — we couldn’t see anywhere near the top. And as we turned the corner and got close to the falls, the power was tremendous. The falls were at peak level after all the rain. We only got within 20 meters or so of the falls before turning back to take the flood detour around the falls. It was misty enough that visibility went to zero, and the wind was enough to make balance an issue. The detour was no picnic either as we scrambled up and down rock ledges and got completely soaked in the process.

Ten minutes further down the path provided a view of the falls. We waited 10 or 15 minutes for the clouds to lift enough for this view.

After a few more kms through forest, the path opens to The Orchard. The dense beech forest opens up for about 400 meters with trees that look like fruit trees.

After five hours on the trail, we arrived at Lake McKenzie Hut for the night. We changed into dry clothes and were glad to see the forecast for the next 3 days: fine and cold.

We flew to Queenstown as our launching point for tramping on the Routeburn track. As you can see, it’s a gorgeous lakeside mountain town in New Zealand’s Southern Alps.

We flew from Cairns to Synday to Auckland yesterday and from Auckland to Queenstown today, so we’ve been on the move. We’re heading out early tomorrow for a three-day trek on the Routeburn Track. We rented packs and sleeping bags and other equipment in town today. Weather looks pretty good, but it’s unpredictable around here. We’ll take plenty of pics!

We sailed from Cairns to the Great Barrier Reef near Green Island. We snorkled and explored Green Island. And I was denied my scuba dive… Because I’ve used an inhaler for cat allergies in the last three years, I could develop a breathing issue while on the dive. What, from catfish?

If Leena’s the skipper…

Does that make me Gilligan?

We didn’t have an underwater camera, but some big fish came up near the boat.

Who wouldn’t want a food court near every national park?

Entertainment for the ride home included Alex donning a special snorkel. That’s not water going down the spout. Hey, it earned all on the boat a shout on the crew!

We drove back from Melbourne to Adelaide via the Ocean Road on the 3rd. It’s a great road — a lot like Highway 1 in California, but the coastline is a bit more like Oregon.

After a few hours of twisty roads behind some, say, slower drivers, we realized this was going to take while. (We’d taken the more direct highway on the way to Melbourne — an easy 8 hours.) We checked in with our Melbourne accommodations; we had to check in by 22:00. It was 16:33, and we had 532 km to go.

OK, Leena would rather walk over hot coals than read this stuff, by my Dad and Dave will love it. And I was a math major. Skip if you like…

Posted speed limits on the highways are 100 in Victoria (Melbourne’s state) and 110 in South Australia (Adelaide). And the highways wind through towns that slow you down to 80, 70, 60, even 50. If we averaged 100, we’d make it with about 7 minutes to spare. Then Leena points out: 30 minute time change to Adelaide. An extra 30 minutes. Of course I make multiple announcements on our progress and the state of the “cushion”. It peaked at 48 minutes. High drama, I can assure you. We made it with 20 mintues to spare.

Lovely sunset along the way.

We spent the 2nd walking downtown Melbourne. The building here has a cool design effect: the lines are actually horizontal. There’s a name for the effect, but I don’t remember…

We bought tickets for that night’s A-League soccer match between the Melbourne Victory and the Queensland Roar. I’d actually watched Melbourne’s match from a few days prior versus Sydney. They surrendered 2 goals in the first four minutes (ouch!), then fought all the way back for a 3-2 win, snapping a three-game losing skid. I feel you need to know this. Anyway, the big story for this game was the state of the pitch. The Telstra dome hosted a NYE party that pretty much trashed the field. Then it rained with the dome open and blah blah blah, they only decided to actually play an hour before kickoff.

After a scoreless first 45, Melbourne broke through for two goals by the midpoint of the second half. A late goal by Queensland wasn’t enough. 2-1 Melbourne.

To prove we didn’t overdo it on NYE, we started the new year with the 1000-step hike about 50km east of Melbourne.

We fended off fierce wildlife:

And fierce weather (unseasonably cold). You can see the Melboune skyline (barely) through the haze.

Last, a waterfall hike. I think 90% of the waterfall hikes in my life have been disappointing. Yes, it’s little more than a tumbling creek, despite the advertising… Ladies and gentlemen: Olinda Falls.