Hiking the Routeburn Track

Originally published January 2018.

The Routeburn Track is one of the seven “Great Walks” of New Zealand.

We did it not once, but twice, because it is a point-to-point trail that people typically hike one-way, but we hiked it out and back, taking 5 nights and 6 days,

And oh man.

It was everything I needed.

We have been going a million miles an hour and have rarely been around wi-fi, and I have sat down very little which means, I have not been able to sit and intentionally write very much, which I’m a little sad about but I’m not that sad, because,

South Island New Zealand wilderness > my computer.

But here is a brief word vomit about our Routeburn Track backpacking trip while I have an hour of wifi in Patagonia, the ice cream shop I keep finding myself in (IT’S SO GOOD).

Six days on the trail, spending 3-8 hours (fairly short for backpacking days) hiking every day, mostly in silence, in a Lord of the Rings fantasy land. It was everything I pictured Middle Earth looking like but on quite a few rounds of steroids, so my mouth was open a lot and of course, there were tears.

The first two days on the trail were not the most glorious

because the area we were hiking in, which, according to the ranger, gets rain around once a month, was predicted to have rain on and off all week. Our luck.  But we hopped on the trail and trekked right along.

Backpacking trips begin the the acceptance of suffering (I still find myself asking why I do it sometimes), so starting off in drizzle and rain knowing that starting our week with wet boots was a likely possibility just got us in the mood that much quicker.

I didn’t care. I was finally on the trail, and I didn’t have to leave for almost a whole week

I was so excited for mental space and stillness, which ironically I find most quickly when I am pushing my body to its limits, which is basically everything about backpacking, especially feeling the weight of the 6 days worth of food we had to carry.

I had to shake off some lingering trauma from the last time I backpacked for more than a night or two, this past June, when a section backpacking trip of the Mountains to the Sea trail in North Carolina turned nasty and ended in a near death experience and blisters so bad that we had to limp to the highway and get saved by a friend. But I had high hopes that this trip would not end so…….scary and sad and soggy. Maybe some better “s” adjectives, like sweet and sunny and…. I’m blanking for a third to balance that sentence but you know what I mean.

We didn’t do extensive research

before booking our campsites/huts for the trek, so only in getting there did we realize the length of the track wasn’t actually that long, only around 40 miles total, 20 there and 20 back, which we could have easily done in a faster amount of time, but splitting 40 miles over 5.5 days would be nice because it would mean we would have lots of time to just sit and enjoy the insanity of the rugged New Zealand bush since our days of hiking would only be between 3 and 8 hours and not 8 to 10 hours like the backpacking we are accustomed to.

So day one was around a 2-hour, misty, foggy afternoon of hiking through lush green forests where everything, the trees, the ground, the rocks, were all covered in a blanket of moss, covered in tiny water droplets making it look even more delicate and fragile and untarnished by civilization. Within minutes I was like umm where are the fairies at because there are perfect woodland fairy houses everywhere.

There were quite a lot of swinging bridges, not like the metal supported ones that America calls swinging bridges (like the one at Grandfather mountain for all you Boonies)…no, the real kind of swinging bridges that mess up your walking and make you look like a newborn deer slamming around like you’re about to fall off the darn thing.

But we all survived, and made it across all of them to arrive at our first campsite at Routeburn Flats.

Lucas and I began what we have decided is going to be a 5-month long Rummy game, keeping score the whole time. After the week our scores were Luke – 1180 and me – 880, so yikes I have some catching up to do, but I think I can make a comeback. But I mean I’ve got some time..

We camped and woke up throughout the night to the sound of pretty hard rain pattering on our tent.

Here it is… the perfect accompaniment to our hardest day tomorrow…

We packed up our sopping tent (which, is a LOT heavier when it is soaked in water by the way), and started our 8-hour day, which included a lot of up…and up.. And up. And not much down until the very end. (Hi hamstrings and glutes)

We were able to get to the most beautiful valley I think I have ever seen before the rain caught up to us again. 

This was the first time where I felt like the LOTR soundtrack should be playing in the background.

We got up to Harris Saddle, the pinnacle, we could see the dreamy hut in the distance,

and the world-renowned most famous viewing spot of the entire trail was just after it, within minutes, 

And guess what we saw when we got there?????

Clouds and the ground we were standing on.

We probably made this face:

-___-

And then after we scarfed down lunch and said farewell to the insane landscape hiding behind the wall of fog that surrounded us, hoping that we would have better weather on the way back.

The wind picked up and soon we were drenched and hiked most of the rest of that day in the rain. Wet. Wet. Wet. Everything was wet.

We camped at Lake McKenzie, and the rain ended up stopping around dinner time, so we walked around only to get attacked by the most irritating insects I have ever come into contact with, most the terrible, annoying, little shits ever called

Sand flies.

They’re the actual worst. That night there were multple times when I woke up and my feet were on fire with itch and I just had to sit there and breathe deeply and tell myself over and over again not to touch them… until I finally fell back asleep, the sting of their itch always vaguely noticeable.

So with the rain and wet and itchy sand fly bites, thus began the theme of sitting with discomfort, a classic theme of backpacking lessons.

Day three was a 3-hour woods walk, dry (yay), down to the Lake Howden Hut.

We did an extra side hike from the hut to Key Summit, having no idea what was waiting for us there, and we saw clear views for the first time and actually realized the significance of where we had been hiking.

SO PRETTY.

Also say hello to my New Zealand mom hat that I have lots of fun being a goofball in and tightening it way too close to my chin just because:

Day 4 was a more lazy day… This was our turn-around day, and we we only had 3 hours back to Lake McKenzie, where we had camped on night 2. It was supposed to rain all day, so we were not in a rush to get to the campsite only to sit in the rain, so we took advantage of our dry shelter at Lake Howden as long as we could.

My quiet, peaceful morning of sipping tea and reading was brutally disrupted by a rambunctious Kiwi family of 8, the kind of family where everyone yells when they talk, and they all talk at the same time (I don’t know how they survive). So my ADD self could not process a word in my book because my consciousness could not push past the yelling that was filling the air around me.

I have to be gracious and remember that loud people backpack too.

And they have just as much of a right to backpack as I do.

But it’s really shocking when you’ve had silence for three days and then suddenly 8 people are screaming next to you.

Oh well. In the world of introverts seeking silence, you win some, but you lose most. This world is so dang loud.

Our waiting out the rain actually worked in our benefit because the rain turned into clouds which turned into some sunshine. So we hiked our three miles back up to Lake McKenzie in decently dry conditions, minus the trees that always drip on you. I mean, it is a rainforest.

Lake McKenzie round two included more rummy, a topless dip in the freezing lake (if you know me at all, you know it had to be done), and talking to a nice couple from the Netherlands named Ilsa and Juice. That’s problably not how you spell his name but he said Americans always pronounce his name wrong and say juice so I assume it’s spelled pretty close to juice if that’s the case.

AND THEN DAY 5 HAPPENED.

SUN SUN SUN and VIEWS VIEWS VIEWS.

We made our way back up to Harris Saddle, which was now covered in zero fog, and we could see the crazy jagged mountains we had no idea were there before. We ate lunch and dropped our packs to scramble up the incredibly steep Conical Hill, above Harris Saddle, which took a little over an hour, but was so worth it.

Then back down the dreamy Middle Earth/LOTR looking valley, down down down (oh my poor knees), all the way down to Routeburn Flats, where we started our journey on night one.

This time we stayed in a hut, which I’m not a huge fan of because it’s super hard to sleep when you have 10-20 randos sleeping in the same room, especially when you have strange men that snore so loud you don’t know how they get any sleep ever, and other men who sound like they are having a panic attack in their sleep. Sketch and awk.

My last morning I reflected back on the week, thinking through all of the billions of thoughts I had while I was hiking, connecting dots, reflecting, feeling, ending my hike with tears rolling down my cheeks, a classic sign in the world of Emily that soul has been filled in a deep, piercing way.