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The morning was filled with hours of rustling packing noises and 'shhhh's from a room with 25 people waking up at different times. I couldn't believe how noisy some people were; talking (almost shouting) whilst surrounded by sleeping people! I can't believe how educated people can be so stupid!
We got dressed quickly (as was still very chilly) and set off.
Day 2
11.3km, up 1200feet and down 1500 feet. We left at 9am and arrived at 4pm! A long but beautiful day!
We had out big climb to start with which wasn't easy but we had a growing and stunning views of the Routeburn Valley behind us which made it quite enjoyable!
As we climbed, we reached Lake Harris, which was very exciting for obvious reasons! The weather was great and the sun was shining brightly off its surface. This was only 1255 meters, which seems tiny compared to the inca trail! We went through the pass to reach Harris Saddle (a little shelter) which is on the boundary between Mt Aspiring National Park and Fiordland National Park. We left our bags there and took a 1.5 hour detour up Conical Hill - which was NOT a hill. More like a huge mountain that required climbing instead of walking! I was using my hands half the time as it was so steep. At the top (phew) there were amazing views of the Hollyford Valley through to Lake McKerrow and beyond Martins Bay all they way to the Tasmin Sea!!!
We stayed up there for 15 mins enjoying the view and taking some photos before beginning our descent very carefully!
Back at Harris Saddle we ate our tuna sandwiches for lunch before starting our 4 our walk to Lake Mackenzie Hut. This was mostly all downhill and was really beautiful. Many streams crossed our party which were so pure we drink from them. There was a large variety of plants which added to our long walk across the top of the valley!
At the end of this we saw Lake Mackenzie, which was very exciting for me for obvious reasons! We were very tired by this point so quickly went down but over half way down the terrain drastically changed to creepy twisted trees and large fallen rocks covered in thick green moss! It was so cool and reminded us of The Lord Of The Rings!
At 4pm we were very happy to see our hut for the night, although all of the independent bunks had already been taken (or saved for people who weren't there yet by friends...grrrr) so Garth and I are sharing a rather large communal bed with about 20 other people...
We ate early and managed to occupy ourselves with old National Geographic magazines until 8.15 when we had our 'hut chat'. On first impressions our ranger seems mean and vacant, but after 10 mins of talking he told us that Fiordland National Park was so big that 7 crashed aircrafts have never been found and 23 missing people had never been found!! He then spoke for 45 minutes giving us really interesting facts about the park and funny stories, it was both captivating and HILLARIOUS. He had some mannerisms very much like Alan Partridge which made Garth and I laugh all the more. A lot of the steel parth markers were bent (I thought because of fallen rocks) because of heavy snow!!! Also a lot of the small metal bridges across the streams are moved by helicopters in the winter to down in the valley to say them being mangled and deformed by snow. He told us stories of campers loosing a chocolate moose to high winds and him having to kayak into the lake to retrieve it (and they still ate it) and of the fire inspector telling him he needed fire proof matrices, so the helicopter was flying 60 in all strapped together, when the strap broke... He described it like autumn leave falling!!! It took them months to retrieve them all from mountains, trees and lakes! It was great!
Bed was slightly more problematic as it was super hot due to do many people sharing a bed and the Israeli guy next to Garth snooping like a dinosaur! No jokes. I was so close to taking my matrice down to the kitchen and sleeping there. Needless to say I didn't get any sleep...
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