Giveaways
THE ROUTEBURN TRACK is one of New Zealand’s ten official Great Walks (soon to be eleven).
In UNESCO World Heritage surroundings, the Routeburn Track was also reputedly named one of the eleven top trails in the world by National Geographic Adventure magazine in 2005. It leads from the headwaters of Lake Wakatipu to the Divide, on the road to Milford Sound.
The whole 32-kilometre track can be done as amulti-day hike, but sections of the track are also very accessible to day-walkers.
Also dubbed ‘the ultimate alpine adventure’ by New Zealand's Department of Conservation (DOC) and others, the Routeburn Track boasts unrivalled views of the Southern Alps to the east and the Darran Mountains to the west.
In the warmer part of the year, the Great Walk season, the adventure includes hikes through high-altitude meadows in which flowers such as South Island Edelweiss are often in bloom.
South Island Edelweiss do not belong to the same family as the original Edelweiss of Europe, but they look similar. Other alpine flowers of the South Island include numerous species of large daisies and the Mount Cook Lily, misnamed because it is actually a buttercup!
The Routeburn Track is a very popular walk and must be booked well in advance if you go during the Great Walk season, which technically extends from Labour Weekend, the fourth weekend of October – a holiday which honours the toiler, in a similar fashion to Mothers’ Day – until 27 April.
Out of season the track becomes hazardous, as it is prone to avalanches.
Although the huts often fill up fast in-season, there are also several campsites in scenic locations near the huts for those wishing to camp outside, although this is best during the warmer months. These campsites are much needed, too, because in recent years the tracks have become really full as tourists have flocked to the Routeburn and other Great Walks over summer.
One reason for the Routeburn’s popularity could be its abundance of appearances in films. The mountains behind nearby Glenorchy, mountains which can be viewed from the start of the track, were used as the location of the Misty Mountains in the Lord of the Rings. Other sections near the track were also used in its prequel, The Hobbit. Air New Zealand also used the Routeburn as a set for an airline safety video with Man vs Wild star Bear Grylls, who began the video by declaring “I’ve just been dropped into one of the most beautiful places on Earth. For the next few minutes, I’m going to take you on a journey along the majestic Routeburn Track.”
'The Bear Essentials of Safety' #airnzbear’, 26 February 2013, on Youtube
Trampers seem to agree, with DOC estimating in 2006 that over 13,000 people stayed atleast one night on the track every year as of that date, with the numbers probably higher now, pre-Covid at least.
Wanting to see what the all the fuss was about, I tramped the Routeburn in-season with two friends from Auckland. Both my friends were great fun to tramp with and took some amazing photos along the way, especially of Mount Christina and the Hollyford Mountains.
Like the nearby Caples/Greenstone Circuit, the Routeburn Track can be started at either end; beginning at the Divide, which is one and a half hours from Te Anau, or the Routeburn Shelter, which is a 68-km drive from Queenstown along the banks of Lake Wakatipu, near the small town of Glenorchy.
We caught a lift to the eastern end of the track up the Routeburn Road, from Glenorchy, and began our tramp with a hike of just under nine kilometres between the Routeburn Shelter and the spectacular Routeburn Falls, where there is also a hut, and an upmarket lodge.
On the way, we climbed up above the Routeburn Flats.
From the Routeburn Falls, we carried on for the second-longest section of the track, hiking a bit over eleven kilometres through the valley and up over the Harris Saddle.
The Saddle is the highest point on the track at 1225 metres, and offers expansive views of the Hollyford Valley and the nearby Darran Mountains. There is also amazing birdlife on the track too, by the way, thanks to DOC and the trapping of intoduced predators that now occurs. I saw rock wrens there, little birds that nest on the track in summer. The New Zealand rock wren, to give it its full title, is New Zealand's only fully alpine bird in the sense that it never descends below the treeline, unlike the kea, New Zealand's famous mountain parrots; which mostly live in the mountains but also venture down into the forests from time to time.
The rock wren has at least three Māori names as well, including one that means 'little complaining bird'! A friend of mine named Murray Green took some amazing photos of the kea on the track and (I think) the little fantail or pīwakawaka, with its distinctive eyebrows and fierce forward gaze, together with a few of the other photos reproduced in this post as well. Thanks, Murray!
I revisited the Harris Saddle from the Glenorchy end in late August 2020. You aren’t supposed to be on the Routeburn Track in winter, of which August is the last month in the Southern Hemisphere: or indeed outside the approved Great Walk season, as there are lots of alpine hazards. But there had not been much snow lately and I wanted to see some. Plus, I am an experienced mountaineer.
From the Glenorchy end, the winter peaks looked forbidding!
Here is a hazard sign describing all the different ways you could die:
Here is a selfie of me enjoying myself above a snow-free canyon. I think the picture is actually flipped right to left but it doesn’t look as good the other way, anyhow.
Here is a video that I’ve made of that trip. The thumbnail image shows Lake Harris, no longer lovely and blue but chilly and black.
I did not go any further westward on this winter trip, because the Hollyford Face is exposed to the south. As in South Pole that is, the equivalent of a North Face in the northern hemisphere. So it is really a place you don’t want to be in winter.
But that wasn’t such an issue for our in-season journey, the one that I was talking about before my digression on the winter trip.
On our in-season journey, we descended from the Harris saddle along the Hollyford Face toward Lake Mackenzie Hut. There, we stayed overnight before carrying on to complete the last section of the Routeburn.
This final stretch was a twelve-kilometre hike past the impressive Earland Falls and past the former site of Lake Howden Hut,which was demolished after a 2020 landslide, to reach the Divide and finish our tramp.
On this leg, it's very much worth taking the side trip to Key Summit, from which you can see Lake Marian.
The Routeburn really is a beautiful, classically romantic journey in the mountains.
Here is the DOC page on the Routeburn Track.
If you liked the post above, check out my new book about the South Island! It's available for purchase from this website.
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