Milford Track: Day 3

The third day on the Milford is the most challenging.  A climb of 400 metres leads to the Mackinnon Memorial and saddle, and then there is a descent of 970 metres over rocky terrain to the next hut.

One of several bridges

At the Top of the Mackinnon Pass

 

This is the day we wanted fine weather:  no mist at the top, no freezing winds and no rain as we clambered down over those rocks and across those streams.   Please let us arrive at Dumpling Hut in one piece,  and never mind that wardens Peter and Manaa would consider us cowards for wanting to stay dry as well.

Ho hum, another waterfall...

Hurrah!  There was very little rain and some impressive scenery en route.  Waterfalls, streams and convenient bridges made the way exciting.

All forty trampers arrived safe and sound.  Warden Ian was suitably relieved -- he would have had to go climbing up the rocky path in the dark searching for stragglers if we all hadn't come in by nightfall.  He told us he had done it the evening before -- rounding up the strays seemed to be a regular happening at his end-of-the-hard-bit location.

We read in the Dunedin paper a couple of nights later that someone had been helicoptered off the Milford with a leg injury.  I bet Warden Ian was the one to put in the call.

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Such tropical foliage -- low growing ferns and ponga (tree ferns)

Ian the hut warden also lamented the trials of keeping beds and people correctly sorted.  Too many groups were claiming all the lower bunks!  (Twelve lower bunks claimed for 12 friends who were still out on the trail was too much!)  Too many folks were bunk swapping (we had to write our names on a list giving the number of the bunk we were in).  People were using more than one bunk for their stuff.  It drove him crazy.  I listened contritely, feeling slightly guilty --  for the first time in three nights, each person in our party had a coveted lower bunk.

Oh, good.  A bottom bunk for a change!