On our back door step

As a student, I once lived in Christchurch, where I discovered tramping. At the time I didn’t believe that there could be a better base for tramping than there. Then I moved to Invercargill and discovered that there is limitless fun to be had in Fiordland, Southland and Stewart Island that is second to none for tramping. Better still, it is all on our back door step; even Mt Aspiring National Park is only a 2 ½ hour drive away. While out-of- town trampers rightly target DOC’s Great Walks (Rakiura Track, Milford Track, Kepler Track and Routeburn Track) or the Humpridge Track, there are plenty of other less known tracks and huts here that I especially enjoy. I describe them all in the guide book for the region, Moir’s Guide South (Dr George Moir, who wrote the first edition back in 1925, is no longer with us, but the tradition lives on), though even its 239 pages leave room for further exploration if you want to get off the tracks.

Heading back to the Routeburn Track in winter. Credit: Robin McNeill

With such a range of choices of places to go tramping available, it may seem strange then that the area I hold with greatest affection is the Routeburn Track. I’ve never tramped the whole length of it at once, but I often use it for access to the Valley of the Trolls, Route Burn North Branch (there is a neat, wee rock bivouac there that I once found and is now a popular place to spend a night) up to North Col, and the ominous sounding Deadman’s Track.

Deadman’s Track, which starts at the floor of the Hollyford Valley, climbs pretty directly up to near Harris Saddle. It turns out that while the track is a bit of a puffer, no one died on it – the name comes from someone found dead at the bottom. This track is a rewarding climb: up from the luxuriant temperate forest in the valley floor, through an alpine scrub zone and then finally out onto the open tussock and snow grass tops. Watching the vegetation change with altitude is quite fun and experienced trampers can tell how high they are from the plants around them.

Lower Hollyford looking across to the Routeburn Track. Deadmans Track starts down the valley, on the left hand side of the photo. Credit: Karyn Owen

It’s a bit of a shame then, that the peace and quiet that I find in this area is at risk from developers’ plans to dig a tunnel from near the start of Deadman’s Track through to the Routeburn road-end. What can they be thinking? I don’t like the idea of a gravel crusher and a concrete batcher sitting on the Hollyford airstrip grinding and clanking away all day and every day for two years, disrupting the peace up and down the valley. The thought of a large truck carting spoil down the road to the airstrip dumping ground every 15 minutes and then back up to the tunnel mouth again doesn’t appeal either. For goodness sake, 30,000 people marched up Queen Street last year because they didn’t like the idea of mining in national parks! So, I guess I’ll be writing a submission to the Department of Conservation objecting to it. Any thinking tramper would.

See you in the Hills, Robin.

About Robin McNeill

Robin is the Enterprise Project Manager at Venture Southland. He has been involved in major telecommunications projects in Southlandincluding designing and building the European Space agency rocket tracking facility at Awarua. He is a keen tramper and has recently rediscovered biking to work.