Giveaways
I DID the Milford Track a few years ago with the Wakatipu Tramping Club, after the close of the Great Walks season (October-April), during which the tracks are busy and hut bookings are required.
The first month after the close of the season is when a lot of locals do the walks, because there’s still coal and wood left in the huts!
We stayed at a motor camp in Te Anau and had to catch a boat the next morning at Te Anau Downs, about a 45-minute drive from the town.
Te Anau is a very interesting place, with only two thousand permanent residents. Nestled on the eastern shores of Lake Te Anau, the township of Te Anau is a very popular tourist destination because of its proximity to Milford Sound, the Kepler Track, and other spectacular walks. However, it does have a ‘shoulder season’ – a period before the high numbers of travellers start to come in, when the town is quieter.
The town has a wonderful movie theatre called the Fiordland Cinema, which was especially constructed for the locally-filmed movie Ata Whenua– Shadowland, its title reflecting the Māori name for the region.
The boat ride from Te Anau Downs was a lot of fun and the scenery around Lake Te Anau looked incredible from out in the water.
We landed at Glade Wharf after about an hour on the boat, and strolled along river flats to Clinton Hut, five kilometres from the wharf. This part of the journey passed quickly. All walkers on the track spend their first night at Clinton Hut.
From Clinton Hut, we tramped on to Mintaro Hut on Lake Mintaro, past the more glamorous but expensive Pompolona Lodge and a number of shelters: a walk that took us around six hours. That was where we spent our second night.
The track got steeper the next day, as we climbed towards the beautiful Mackinnon Pass, the highest point on the track.
Mackinnon Pass bears the name of the Scottish explorer Quintin McKinnon, whose first and last names have both been written down in various ways. Like much of the South Island the pass has a real Scottish-highlands feel to it as well. It put me in touch with my father's-side roots for a moment, even if his native town of Dundee is on the other side of the world!
I loved the pass: even though it was cloudy, the view of the entire mountain range was really impressive. Then, we tramped downhill to Dumpling Hut, past the Quintin Lodge and an airstrip. A hike which was, in total, six or seven hours from Mintaro Hut.
We all wanted to see Sutherland Falls, named after another Scotsman, but found them to be taped off with a safety warning advising that the track to the falls was in poor condition and therefore closed. This we ignored on the assumption that, on a Great Walk, such a precaution was probably conservative and aimed at the inexperienced in any case. All the same we were caught on the way back by a DOC officer, who gave us a right talking to!
After our adventure at Sutherland Falls, we continued on to Dumpling Hut where we spent the night. Our final day on the Milford Track was the eighteen-kilometre tramp to Sandfly Point, passing the impressive Mackay Falls near the Arthur River, and the equally mesmerising Giant Gate Falls beside Lake Ada. At Sandfly Point, the track runs into Milford Sound, also known as Piopiotahi: from the bay you can see the magnificent Mitre Peak / Rahotu rising over the fiord. As we caught a short boat ride past Mitre Peak to finish our tramp, it wasn’t hard to see why it is perhaps the most iconic mountain in New Zealand.
Update (2022): For a follow-up, see my Milford Track Revisited.
For a further resource, see the New Zealand Department of Conservation's page on the Milford 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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