Routeburn Track: Mackenzie Hut to The Divide

location: final leg of the Routeburn track - Lake Mackenzie to The Divide
distance: 12km
sights: after the up and down of the preceding days, the third day was pretty level and mostly downhill - and still pretty gorgeous. (one tiny, strenuous uphill bit before the final descent...)

a trio of women headed towards Routeburn Falls did a marvelous disservice to the entire hut by waking up at 6:00 am and proceeding to pack their bags. while everyone else was trying to get a final bit of sleep. this would have made sense in the world of the Camino where numerous people would awake at such an hour - and everyone else would follow within 15 or 20 minutes - but here, it was clear that people intended to have a lie-in. important point in bunk etiquette; if you anticipate getting up before everyone else, take a few moments before bed to pull out morning necessities and arrange your pack. otherwise, everyone you wake up (and you will wake everyone up) will send bad bad energy at you.


and so we got up earlier than we'd planned, ate our tasty camp breakfast-in-a-bag (thanks Backcountry! now we just have to find something adequate stateside.) and were out of the bunk welllllll before those three early-rising ladies, sipping their coffee and getting gnarly looks from other bleary-eyed trampers. another reason it pays to pack your bag the night before ...

as a consequence, we were out on the trail before anyone else - again - and had marvelous, unspoiled tramping nearly all morning. we went through several avalanche zones with dire warnings to tell us not to stop for the next xx hundred meters. for the first third of the hike or so, we had unobstructed views of the mountains across the valley; I stumbled on a couple of occasions from looking at the view and not the path in front of me.

the highlight of the hike were the Earland Falls (178 meters high). the guidebook recommended it as a lunch spot, but we reached it mid-morning, earlier than we even wanted to stop for a snack. so we just took a few moments and enjoyed the sounds and view and the pool at the base of the falls.

from there, we remained below the treeline ... and began encountering giant bags of gravel dropped in the middle of the path. since the track isn't accessible by road, material to build up and repair the track are dropped in enormous square bags by helicopter, smack in the middle of the trail. made for interesting obstacles.