Ryan, Nick and I completed our first Great Walk the Routeburn Track. The Routeburn Track traverses 32 kilometers of Mount Aspiring and Fiordland National Parks, part of Te Wahipounamu - South West New Zealand World Heritage Area. The road distance between the track ends is 350 K. So we decided to just hike to the summit from the side closest to Queenstown and come back on the same side to save on transportation and time. The hike/tramp/walk we did started at the Routeburn Shelter to the Routeburn Falls Hut for a night then to Harris Saddle and the Summit and then back down to the Routeburn Shelter. The first day was nice with barely a drizzle and the start of the second day the trail turned into a stream and there were water falls everywhere you looked. With the rain letting up in the afternoon. The last pictures are of the drive from Glenorchy to Queenstown and a rainbow.
Along the way through the rain forest we followed the Route Burn river and went over 6 swinging bridges. We saw too many waterfalls to count. We also saw some neat birds called rifleman that hop along trees and look like flying puffballs and a really tame New Zealand Robin. There were huge beech trees covered in moss and ferns in every type and variety. We also saw some fish in the crystal cool blue water, but didn't fish for any. It was a great experience minus the sand flies that attacked us in the car park at the end of the trail.
Here is an excerpt from an article that I found in the May 2005 National Geographic Adventure magazine
Not a half day into the Routeburn Track, at a place called Key Summit, the peaks of Mount Aspiring National Park surround an open meadow set high on a rare triple continental divide. From there, three epic valleys—the Hollyford, the Eglinton, and the Greenstone—drain west into the Tasman Sea, south into the Southern Ocean, and east into the Pacific. On the horizon stands the imposing Darran Range, where Sir Edmund Hillary prepped for Everest. It's a portentous spot, itself reason enough for a trip to the other side of the world.
The Routeburn, one of New Zealand's nine "Great Walks," is less crowded than its world-famous neighbor, the Milford Track, and the scenic payoffs along the Routeburn's alpine stretches far surpass those of the lower, often cloudier Milford. The Routeburn's easily traveled route connects two of New Zealand's conservation jewels, Mount Aspiring and Fiordland National Parks, via a high alpine pass named the Harris Saddle.
To reach the saddle, you'll travel through valleys choked with rain forests reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest, except that in New Zealand's Southern Alps the green gossamer in the trees is goblin moss instead of lobaria, and the forest is twisted silver beech and red beech, not Douglas fir. The flora here is hyperabundant: Hikers who set out in December and January will witness an explosion of wildflowers, including the kotukutuku, the world's largest variety of fuchsia, and the Mount Cook Lily, the biggest species of buttercup on Earth.
