Routeburn Birthdays Intermission, Day 2 – Blair’s Birthday

We spent another slow and lazy day today – we had long since concluded that taking three days for this hike was really conservative for our pace, so we could lag a bit.  Most of the day was a sidle along a long ridge, though I use “sidle” lightly because the trail was beautifully benched the whole way.  We were approaching Fiordland all day, and the region made itself known with some impressive waterfalls that touched down right near the track.

After a pleasant nap at the final hut, we reached the trailhead around five.  It hadn’t occurred to us that hitching at this hour might be difficult due to low traffic.  We waited a while, and our hearts leapt at each passing car, but sure enough we found a ride – a really nice British couple that wanted to stop and see all the highlights along the way.  This was fine by us, as we wanted to see everything too.  In particular there was this one amazing gorge where stream-borne rocks had ground amazing curved shapes into the walls.  An informative plaque said this was the result of harder rock upstream meeting the softer rock downstream.

We stayed at Milford Lodge, right near the sound.  Today is Blair’s birthday, and I made fudge, which was delicious.  We met a cycle tourist who was travelling all over New Zealand, and spent the evening hanging out and drinking wine and celebrating both our birthdays and the completion of the trail!