By Michael Lanza
We follow the Routeburn Track’s winding path through the dense, vibrant greenery of ferns, mosses, and ubiquitous beech trees of the forest in Mount Aspiring National Park, in the southwest corner of New Zealand’s South Island. The track parallels the raging whitewater of the river known as the Route Burn, which crashes thunderously over a train wreck of boulders in its bed, foaming white almost without interruption on its steep course, only occasionally slowing and calming to reveal its emerald color in the rare flat spots in this vertiginous canyon.
Very light, almost ghost-like rain seems to barely materialize from the gray sky, sprinkling on us like someone would shake a little salt onto her dinner; in the mild air, the four of us hike quite comfortably in T-shirts, hardly getting wet. Throughout our walk to our first hut on the Routeburn Track, the light showers come and go but mostly stay, common meteorological conditions in a part of the world that averages about seven meters/275 inches of rain annually, or about seven times as much precipitation as Seattle or Boston.
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Beams of sunshine bust through the clouds periodically, hitting us with abrupt, powerful warmth in the first week of December, early spring in New Zealand. But those beams vanish so quickly that you can question your memory of seeing sunshine just minutes ago. Here, the sun is an occasional visitor who prefers short stays.
My daughter, Alex, and her best friend since they were two years old, Adele Davis, both 21, leapfrog my wife, Penny, and me along the track. Shortly before the Routeburn Flats Hut, we reach one small stream crossing that’s perhaps calf-deep, with no bridge, where Alex, Adele, and I cross on a wet and slick, fallen tree, while Penny just steps on submerged rocks in the stream and keeps her feet dry. It’s perhaps 16° C/60° F and partly cloudy when we reach the hut around 3 p.m., having hiked the 7.5 kilometers/4.7 miles from our starting point at the Routeburn Shelter and car park in an easy couple of hours.
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We’re spending three days trekking the Routeburn Track, one of New Zealand’s most famous hut treks and Great Walks. Located in Mount Aspiring and Fiordland national parks, it’s a point-to-point traverse of 33.1 kilometers/20.7 miles that begins and ends in rainforest—what Kiwis accurately call “the bush”—and features about nine kilometers/almost six miles of alpine hiking high above the bush, including a crossing of the mountain pass called Harris Saddle (also known by its Maori name, Tarahaka Whakatipu) at 1,255 meters/4,117 feet.
After we claim beds in one of the bunkrooms, I step outside by myself and walk across the small meadow behind the hut to the edge of this flat, shallow, and gently flowing stretch of the Route Burn. Rainforest grows as thick as fur up the steep mountainsides crowding this valley, a mosaic of shades of green. The muscular, white column of a waterfall bursts from one forested mountainside and plunges downward, a height difficult to determine from a distance, before disappearing back into the bush.
The scene releases a flood of memories of my personal journey in New Zealand, going back about 20 years. This is my fourth visit to this country that I’ve developed a deep love for—its landscapes and its charming and warm people—and the first with my family. I’ve taken other hut treks here, dayhiked some of the classic tracks like the Tongariro on the North Island and Roy’s Peak on the South Island, and sea kayaked fjords and canoed a wild river here, enchanted by every adventure.
But this is the first time I’ve been able to book huts for the popular Routeburn Track and the even-more-popular, world-famous Milford Track (which we’ll walk just a couple of days after this trek—and both of which I successfully booked thanks to an easy but not obvious strategy I learned for navigating the New Zealand Department of Conservation Great Walks reservation system).
Out here now, it feels like my personal New Zealand journey has come full circle.
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Harris Saddle and Lake Mackenzie
Penny and I leave the hut at 7 a.m. on our second day, motivated to an early start by the forecast of heavier rain by afternoon; Alex and Adele will follow in an hour, sleeping in later knowing they’ll catch up. It’s mild and a bit humid again, with little air movement in the forest, as we start the long hike up to Harris Saddle. Climbing steadily, we hear bird songs we don’t recognize in an otherwise quiet rainforest of ferns growing prolifically in many sizes, mosses clinging to every boulder and tree trunk, leafy bushes and plants foreign to virtually anyone from outside New Zealand, and trees with a base circumference broader than the passenger compartment of a mid-size car.
About an hour from Routeburn Flats, we walk past the Routeburn Falls Hut—and just a few minutes beyond the hut, we stop at one of the natural wonders of this track: Routeburn Falls. Located basically at the “bush line,” the elevation where the forest ends and the treeless terrain of tussock grasses and other low vegetation begins, the river splits into multiple braids that leap over several waterfalls of varying widths and volumes. It’s not a single waterfall so much as an outdoor museum of waterfalls.
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Beyond Routeburn Falls, we continue climbing steadily as the Routeburn Track meanders with almost as many twists and meanders as the Route Burn Left Branch stream. We’re now on the track’s leg between Routeburn Falls Hut and Lake Mackenzie Hut that lies mostly above the bush line, fully exposed to weather and wind.
And not surprisingly in this climate and these mountains, what began a little while ago as a very light mist very slowly builds to showers as we climb toward Harris Saddle. We pull on our rain jackets and pants well before the pass and before the mist intensifies and are happy we did—because for the next few hours, except for the respite offered by the Harris Saddle shelter, we’ll hike in on-and-off showers (demonstrating why having the right gear is essential; see the critical gear I used on this trip at the bottom of this story).
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The track leads us below and then above one thick and raucous waterfall; across the valley, a tributary stream splits into multiple braids that pour over at least a dozen distinct drops. Wildflowers with giant white petals and a bright, golden pistil bloom beside the trail. The track ascends to the top of cliffs that we walk along, high above Lake Harris, as low clouds partly shroud the peaks encircling the lake.
Turning a corner, we cross the wide flat of the pass and, now in heavier showers, duck inside the Harris Saddle shelter, which is welcoming and, best of all, dry. We snack, drink, and linger for a while before pushing on. Outside the hut, the fog thickens to obliterate everything beyond about 30 meters/100 feet; we’re not tempted to hike the side path to the top of Conical Hill, at 1,515 meters/4,970 feet, expecting we wouldn’t see anything, anyway. But after maybe 30 minutes of walking through this pea soup, the overcast lifts to give us sweeping views of the Hollyford Face, the Darran Mountains, and the bush line below us.
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Beyond the pass, the Routeburn makes a long, high traverse with expansive views of these richly green mountains—and arguably reaches the trail’s scenic apex at the top of switchbacks overlooking the bowl formed by the waterfall-spliced cliffs and thickly forested mountainsides embracing the blue-green waters of Lake Mackenzie. The Lake Mackenzie Hut, our destination, looks tiny at the lake’s far end.
The four of us step onto the hut’s roofed porch at around 1 p.m., when we had hoped to get there; and minutes after we’re all inside one of the bunkrooms, hanging our wet rain shells to dry, the showers intensify to heavy rain. Soon, the drumming on the windows and metal roof of the main hut grows to a volume that almost drowns out the cacophony of conversations bouncing around the hut’s large common room. The storm gradually morphs into the kind of tree branch-whipping, wind-driven tempest that carries rain on visible waves rolling over the land. The torrential rain and lashing wind continue through the afternoon and evening—a sight that makes a person happy to have a dry, warm shelter, even if it’s a large bunkroom shared by 32 people.
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The Gear I Used See my reviews of the outstanding rain jacket and pants, fleece hoodie, sleeping bag, trekking poles, and headlamp I used on this trip.
See all stories about New Zealand adventures, “How to Prevent Hypothermia While Hiking and Backpacking,” “5 Tips For Staying Warm and Dry While Hiking,” “7 Pro Tips For Keeping Your Backpacking Gear Dry,” and this menu of all stories offering expert backpacking tips at The Big Outside.