Lone Rangers

Richard Langston walks our most famous track and discovers the wonders of Fiordland and the lonely dedication of our backcountry rangers

One of the rituals after a day’s tramp in our national parks is the nightly hut address by the park ranger. The experienced ones are notable for their laconic back country commonsense, a knowledge of the bush built up over seasons and what might even, on occasion, rise to be called wisdom. Not that they would ever be so grand.

Ian, the ranger on our third and last night on the Milford Track, told us to take the last day slowly. “If you’re looking down at your feet all the time you’re going too fast and you’re missing out on what you’re here to see.”

He told us the story of the tramper who finished the last 18 kilometres of the track in four hours. That is at least two hours faster than the recommended time to take through this final tract of beech forest, river and streams, and mountain peaks. Apparently the tramper was disgruntled with his fellow hikers and wanted to shoot through.

When the tramper arrived at the end of the track, Ian asked him why he’d been in such a hurry. The tramper wanted to know how Ian had reached the end of the track before him.

Ian told him: “I left the hut at five to nine and it’s now three minutes past nine. I came in a helicopter because I’m cleaning windows [in the shelter at Sandfly Point] all day.” Ian’s slow shake of the head suggested his bemusement at anyone who could want to move through such memorable country in haste.

We’d met Ian earlier that day out on the track where he was rearranging rocks to make a small section of track more negotiable. “You’re walking on the water table taking that side,” he said. He looked down at the track again, “How can I stop people doing that?”

Such are the conundrums of the park ranger. We were unaware of such things as the water table as we

scrunched past him in our boots.

Ian had worked on the track for six hours that day. Half of his time paid for by the Department of Conservation and half by the private companies that offer guided walks on the Milford Track. He thought that was a pretty good deal for all concerned.

Ian’s worked for 17 years at Dumpling Hut. He took some pleasure in telling us this was a year longer than his veteran colleague, Ross, who is based at the first hut on the track. “He was my apprentice for three years,” Ian said, with just the trace of a grin. (In fact, at 77 Ross is the country’s oldest park ranger and says he, too, has done 17 seasons — let them fight it out!)

Ross is long and lanky and stooped and he knows everything about the trees and birds around his hut site, such as the leaves of the juvenile lancewood being too tough for a moa to eat. On a more practical level, he also reminded us to tie our boots together and hang them up on a wooden peg outside.

Otherwise kea will have a play with them, he said. They would drag a boot into the bush and pick out the insoles and run off with them.

Besides singing the praises of the flora and fauna, and telling us how birds were making a comeback after years of the trapping of stoats, Ross reminded us not to leave any clothes behind — “they’re unlikely to fit me”.

Trampers often clap when rangers finish their talks. We’re appreciative that their knowledge is hard-won over years of observation and living quietly alone in our remotest places. And they always offer practical advice for the day ahead.

“The weather looks good for the next few days and for your climb over the pass,” Ross said, holding up his crossed fingers, “but in Fiordland you never know!”

There is where they measure annual rainfall in metres. Fiordland gets up to nine of them. Nine. Seven metres on average.

Simone, recently out of Whakatane and the ranger on duty at Mintaro Hut, had immersed herself in bushlife to the degree she could mimic the call of the kea, expert enough to elicit a reply from one perched in the nearby beech trees.

“They have three different calls,” she said. She called again and again, just like a local. Rangers are immersed in where they live, and work from their hearts rather than for in consideration of their bank balance.

Ross had advised us to dip ourselves into Lake Mintaro on our following day’s walk and wash away two days of sweat. He said, with the hint of a challenge, it was glacial cold.

He was true to his word. It was ankle-shatteringly cold. We drew breath and dipped our heads in and whooping with disbelief, fled for shore. A young woman from Auckland plunged in and stayed for five minutes. Swimming serenely past us.

Feeling less than hardy outdoor types, we had the compensation of sun to revive us and sunlight on the wall of mountainous rock that is the backdrop to the lake.

The following day we tramped up and up, toward the Mackinnon Pass — the highest point of the track and the place that offers the most spectacular views. There was mist in the valley obliterating everything we’d come to see. The magnificence of the Milford Track behind a grey curtain.

At the top, the wind blew. It was still grey. We hid from the elements in the lee of the stone memorial to Mackinnon — the Scots explorer was the first European to discover the route. Maori had walked it for centuries in search of pounamu.

We walked on to the Mackinnon shelter which is at the highest point of the walk — 1154m. We waited. Kea flew in circles above us, fanning their wings as they went past the window.

“Look at the beautiful colours under their wings,” someone said.

After an hour, we decided to leave. No sooner had we started the descent than patches of blue sky appeared and the sun broke through. The mist rolled away to reveal mountainous peaks and vast bodies of granite wet and shining in the light.

They sat regally across the valley, encircling us and enducing exclamations and long periods of silent awe.

This is why people want to walk the Milford Track and this is why it is regarded as one of the finest walks. Anywhere.

It is a good thing to be distracted by the views, as the descent is hard on the knees. It’s rocky and made less brutal only by the strategic placement of rocks, stones and rails by those who look after the track.

There is also the accompaniment of bird song and the sound of a river as you descend on to the valley floor. The power of water in Fiordland is immense. Rivers smooth huge boulders and carve out clean channels through rock. Waterfalls fall in thick white ribbons.

We see evidence of past floods — hundreds of trees washed down towards the valley. Ian tells us that trampers often have to be airlifted out after storms and floods make the track unnegotiable.

We were lucky. Very lucky, in fact. We had fine weather. If Fiordland goes without rain for 12 days it is regarded as a drought.

After fours days of walking through it, I feel as if I know this ancient, mossy and vertiginous landscape and its moods a little better. A little. The way mist hangs in its peaks and crags, the clarity of its streams, the sheer opacity of its river pools. Their blue mineral quality.

In the winter months, when I hear the weather forecast for Fiordland of heavy rain or snow I will envisage the dry creeks of boulders and rivers swelling to impassable torrents, and the shelters and huts — free of rangers and trampers — silent under their coverings of snow. This remote, primal corner of the country, once again left to its own natural devices.

‘If you’re looking down at your feet all the time you’re going too fast.’