Once I had completed the Routeburn Track, I was still far from being done. From the end of the track, it was 30km to the start of the Greenstone Track, which over the course of 32km would return me to my car. Fortunately, the small community of Kinloch, and its oft recommended accommodation, The Kinloch Lodge, are situated exactly halfway between the Routeburn and Greenstone trailends.
It was noon when I reached the end of the Routeburn, and the weather was fine…sunny and warm. I started walking down the gravel road towards Kinloch, which, at 18km away, would put my total walking distance for the day at nearly 25km (just over 15 miles) - more than I had walked the past two days combined. However, it was a flat, easy walk along the road, and the views were great. The previous evening’s snowstorm had coated all of the surrounding peaks with a fresh dusting, and the white summits glistened brightly against the blue sky.
After about an hour, I was passed by an empty track transportation bus, and I instinctively held out my thumb, hoping to cut a few miles out of the day’s trek. A friendly lady pulled the bus over and told me to hop in, saying she could drive me to a fork in the road a few miles on. I thankfully accepted the ride, and spent fifteen minutes idly chatting about the beauty of the area and about good places to look for work upon my return from the trek.
She dropped me off and I was now a mere 9km from the Kinloch Lodge, which put me a few hours ahead of schedule. I continued down the road, which ran along the delta of the Dart River, as it empties into Lake Wakatipu amid paddocks of grazing sheep. After another 30 minutes or so, a pickup truck came bouncing down the small, gravel road and I again stuck out my thumb. Not expecting to see any traffic along the route, I was perplexed when the truck pulled over and a young, tattooed Kiwi told me that he was headed to Kinloch as well and that he could give me a lift. Hitching is actually a reliable way to get around this country, which I think is spectacular.
I made it to the historic Kinloch Lodge around 1:30PM, a good six hours before I had expected, and was happy to have the extra time to lounge around. The lodge had been recommended to me a few times by different people, and I could immediately see why. It was isolated, but set in a stunning location along Lake Wakatipu, and it has been providing comfortable accommodation to outdoors enthusiasts continuously since 1868, which is quite old by NZ standards. It serves as a very nice hotel, a B&B, and a hostel, as well as an intimate restaurant with a great menu prepared John, the chef and co-owner, who along with his wife Toni, run the place with exceptional friendliness and hospitality.
I liked the place immediately. After checking into my room, which I paid only $27 for, I was given a tour of the facility, which in addition to the restaurant/cafe/bar, included a self-service kitchen, showers, laundry, TV room with collection of DVDs, lounge with swappable bookshelf, hot tub, and a boot dryer. This is a place that knows how to serve its guests.
It was almost completely empty when I arrived, so I sat around the cafe chatting with Ross, a British guy of about my age who worked for John and Toni. I asked if they were hiring at the time, and was told that they are staffed for the season, but are always looking for WWOOFers to help out. I filed that away in the back of mind, and set off to make use of the facilities.
I wasn’t expecting to be able to do laundry between treks, so I was happy to wash my smelly clothes, and I was even happier about the boot dryer, to which I added my soggy footwear and mittens. I spent an hour soaking in the hottub, another unexpected treat, and felt rejuvenated.
At 5:00PM, I went down to the bar to take advantage of happy hour, and then at 6:30 wandered into the restaurant for dinner. The menu was small, and the dining area had only a handful of tables, but the food was extraordinary. And it was reasonably priced, too. I had an appetizer of stuffed mussels, the big NZ green-lipped variety, topped with garlic, butter, and breadcrumbs, and followed that with a delicious steak and fries…I even ate the garlic mayonnaise that accompanied the fries! The meal had been recommended to me by my roommate, an American named Marc Zuliani, who hails from the same place as the only other person I know with a last name that ends in -uliani…New York City.
Marc was a soft spoken and very friendly guy, and he had used the Kinloch Lodge as a home base for his own Routeburn/Greenstone journey. He liked the place so much, he found it hard to leave. After dinner, I joined him for a few drinks, and found out that he worked for Standard & Poor’s on Wall Street. Aware of all the heat that credit rating agencies like S&P took for the current state of our economy, I was hesitant at first to ask too many questions, but I was curious what it was like to work for a company which had so many fingers from across the world pointing at it.
I won’t get into all of the details that we discussed, because I know that for some people finance is not particularly interesting to read about, but I will say that I learned a bit from talking to Marc, and that it was insightful to hear these things from the less publicized point of view. That being said, Marc didn’t seem like someone who you’d imagine worked on Wall Street. He was very well traveled, and had just gone skydiving that day. We spent the rest of the evening exchanging travel stories, and he gave me some good advice for places to go in Southeast Asia (I hadn’t thought of Burma, but he said it was an interesting place). And, best of all, he offered to give me a ride to start of the Greenstone Track the next morning, cutting another 12km out of my walking distance.
The next day, after sharing a filling breakfast with Marc and Ross at the restaurant, I paid my tab. The previous evening’s beer and wine had made the trip a bit less economical than I had planned, but I was celebrating my birthday, I guess, so I could splurge a bit, right? I then hopped in Marc’s car, and after a short ride along Lake Wakatipu, we exchanged email addresses and I was off on my own again, into the wilderness.
The Greenstone Track is not a Great Walk. It is a much less trafficked trail than the Routeburn, and it stays mostly to the valley, lacking the spectacular alpine scenery of other hikes in the area. However, I found the change refreshing and alluring in its own way.
To begin, I saw only one other person the first day. Even when I stopped by the hut, hoping to get a weather report, I found it completely empty. The seclusion was refreshing. Also, unlike the Great Walks, camping is permitted anywhere along the trail, a very welcome freedom.
The majority of the track follows the babbling Greenstone River, which is often quoted as the most productive Brown Trout river in all of New Zealand. It had the same crystal clear waters of the other rivers I’ve seen, but its isolation allows the fish to grow to massive weights. As I wandered along its banks, I spotted a number of huge fish in the river’s many pools. I don’t really know how to fly fish, but I desperately wanted to try, and wished I had thought about buying or renting one in town before I started the trek.
But even without the fish, it was a splendid hike. I walked for hours amid partly cloudy skies, and the valley continued to open up around me. The mountains got taller and spread further apart, and at times, the trail ran straight through the middle of the valley, making me feel tiny. Cows grazed along the riverbank, and I found the scenery reminiscent of Wyoming or Montana. I thought that horseback would be a more appropriate way to experience the valley.
I had gotten lost in thought, absorbing the scenery, and I forgot that I didn’t have a set destination for the night. The beauty of freedom camping is that I could set up camp where ever I wanted, but the downside was that I needed to find somewhere suitable to do so. By the time I started looking seriously, I was already pretty tired, and the pain in my left ankle had returned.
I looked on the map and spotted flat spot in the topo at the confluence of Steele Creek and the Greenstone River, and other than the fact that this location screamed sandfly, it seemed on paper to be a good place to pitch a tent. I had to walk for almost two hours to reach Steele Creek, and when I got there, I noticed a large, modern hut that was explicitly marked “For Guided Campers Only”, and I assumed they wouldn’t want me setting up camp in the middle of their front yard, so I pushed on.
After another hour, the need to stop became urgent, and I found a semi-flat hillside and set up my tent. It was strange, after all the hiking I’ve done in the past few weeks, this was the first time I had actually gone true backcountry camping. In fact, it was the first time in my life. I’ve always had a set destination, a predetermined grassy spot in which to pitch my tent. In theory, I loved the individualism and self-sufficiency of it…but I had been walking continuously for over eight hours, and I just wanted to rest. Sometimes, I prefer a bit of structure, I guess.
My spot was not too great. It was not nearly as flat as I thought, and as I laid on my sleeping bag, I slowly slid into the corner of the tent. In addition, there were sandflies everywhere. I don’t know where they came from, out of thin air it seemed, but they were voracious. I spent a good twenty minutes just killing the ones that had managed to make it inside my tent. I slept for almost 12 hours that night.
In the morning, I felt better. The views from my campsite were wonderful…I had the entire valley to myself. And when I looked closer at my map, I realized that I had already hiked about half of the Greenstone Track. As I plotted out potential camping areas for that evening, I realized that it was completely feasible to finish that day. I kept this mind, and continued the journey up the Greenstone Valley.
After a few hours, I passed a number of people going the opposite direction, but then I was alone again. And the valley began to get narrower and higher. As I approached the Greenstone Saddle (which was virtually unnoticeable), I came to the shores of alpine Lakes McKellar and Howden. At the far end of Lake Howden, I was done with the Greenstone and back on the beginning of the Routeburn, this time heading back towards my car.
When I was only an hour from the carpark, I decided to take the side trip to Key Summit. I had already walked 15km that day, and I was exhausted, but the weather was great and the views from this short climb are supposed to be some of the best in the park.
The hike up Key Summit was an ideal way to conclude my Fiordland tramping trifecta (or quadfecta, I guess?). At 955m, it was by no means the highest point in the park, but the summit was perfectly situated to allow grand views of much of the same scenery I had been tramping through over the past three weeks.
Almost immediately, I broke out of the treeline and as I continued to climb, I could see the entirety of the Hollyford Valley and the exposed ridgeline of the Routeburn Track that I had walked in the snow a few days earlier. To my left, I saw the imposing Darren Mountains, the granite epicenter of all serious mountaineering in Fiordland and backdrop to the Milford Sound, and to my right, I could see down the Greenstone Valley that I had just walked up. In addition, I could see back down the Eglington Valley to Te Anau, which I would be driving to shortly.
As I descended from the summit down to my car, my childish grin returned, and I couldn’t help but think…what will be my next expedition? Am I ready to try one of the more serious tracks like the Dusky or Hollyford/Big Bay? I let my mind wander for awhile, and as I was about to leave the parking lot, I saw a man and a woman with backpacks holding out their thumbs. Normally, I would have kept driving, but after experiencing such luck with hitchhiking myself, I decided I’d see if they wanted a lift to Te Anau.
The two friendly Israelis were cousins and had just finished the Routeburn Track. We spent an hour talking about the traveling lifestyle, the state of Israel, and the differences between American and Israeli Jews. The entire time, I kept thinking of a story my dad had told me about a time in college when he hitched a ride with a crazy Israeli. These two were exceedingly friendly and easy to talk to - far from crazy, but my father’s experience was much different. I remember him telling me that his Israeli never seemed to look at the road, and for some reason thought that the double yellow line was supposed to run down the center of the car. I had to keep myself from laughing a few times when I thought of this. Eventually, we reached town and I dropped them off to meet their fathers, who were traveling New Zealand on motorcycles. As I left, I recommended that if they are ever on the north end of Lake Wakatipu, they should stop by the Kinloch Lodge.
