Mackenzie Hut to the Divide - Day 3

We set out on our third and final day of hiking after waking up in the morning, which in my case meant getting up in the morning, since I'd been waking up all night from the cold! But what a sight greeted me! Looking out across the valley to the sun just risen behind the snowcapped mountains, the pink dawn light still illuminating the valley floor and our cooking shelter as I washed my face in the freezing cold water - as if I wasn't awake enough already! But it was all good after a cup of hot cocoa. We got going fairly early in order to leave time to have a nice lunch beside the lake at Howden Hut and climb up the spur trail to Key Summit. We passed through an area called "The Orchard," which is an open grassland with trees scattered throughout. Its an interesting and unusual break in the regular scenery of dense bush and mountainsides. We continued past a well-placed bathroom and Earland Falls. They are 174 meters tall and we walked almost directly beneath them along the trail. Its a powerful experience to walk so close to the base of such an awesome waterfall. I can't imagine at flood levels. They have an entirely separate route that hikers need to take at times when the river is in flood condition. I'm not saying much about the hiking today because it was all nice. That's the best way to describe it. We didn't have the high mountain vistas and ascents and descents of the day before, or the dramatically changing vegetation. But our hike was just so... nice. Peaceful. Zen. We ate our lunch as planned, out in the sun next to the shore of the lake. Granted, even though we were eating in the sun, we still had to contend with the wind and cool temps, so we were wearing winter hats, fleece jackets, windbreakers and such to stave off the chill as our lack of activity left us to battle against the cooling effects of our evaporationg sweat. A couple times we questioned whether it was really the brightest idea to be eating out there, but we decided that it was so nice to be sitting lakeside, that it was worth trying to eat with one hand while keeping the other warm in your armpit. We had done quite well with getting rid of our food by this point. We'd been engaging in that age-old backpacker tradition of decisionmaking for meals based on weight. "What should we have with dinner?" "Well, I think the zuchinni is heavier than the green beans. Lets eat that first." I often found myself, when deciding which type of fruit to eat, holding one in each hand, feeling their weight and eating whichever was heavier. Sometimes it was a hard call, but every little bit helps, eh?! We managed to give one of our carrots away to a couple of the English girls, Helen and Becky, who had been staying at the huts with us for the past two nights. They were grateful for some fresh veggies and we were grateful to have one less carrot to take care of. Win-win situation! We took off up the hill to the Key Summit turnoff after lunch. Luckily I listened to Anne, when she told me that it was still a little ways up the trail before we hit the turnoff for Key Summit. I thought the trail left from the Hut, and was all prepared to leave my pack there. That would have been a pain in the butt to come back for. The turnoff for the summit trail was so funny. It looked like a pack-parking lot! There were packs everywhere, lining the sides of the trail. I got quite the kick out of the the whole scene. We dropped ours as well, found parking spaces for them and headed up the hill. This time it really was a hill. Unlike Conical. At the top, there was an alpine wetland with a signposted nature trail and brochures at the beginning to guide you through it. We had a nice time wandering up there. I love wetlands and a wetland up on a mountaintop - wow! I had never seen that before! We followed along up to the lookout to Lake Marion, a lake situated in a narrow valley between two mountainsides. It is literally two mountains coming together with just a lake in the middle. Pretty cool. We had a laugh about the viewpoint, however, because on our way back down, we noticed that we could see Lake Marion from pretty much anywhere on the trail! We descended back down to the regular trail, saddled up with our packs again and headed off toward the divide. I was walking in front, with Anne following along behind me. I was having some digestive issues after our lunch and startled Anne out of her reverie with my announcement that I was burpy and my burps tasted like sausages. Poor Anne! She was a little grossed out by this, especially when it came out of nowhere to startle her out of her hiking zen. Of course, that made me start laughing so hard that it cured my burpiness at least. We walked the rest of the way out and down to the Divide, timing it perfectly to be there 10 minutes before our shuttle was scheduled to come and pick us up. We were quite proud of having such prompt and well-planned timing. Because after all, who wants to sit down at the side of the road when you could be out playing around in the mountains?! Our shuttle took us to Milford Sound via the Hollyford Track trailhead, where we dropped off several fresh hikers to begin a trek of their own. This was where I just had to laugh as I saw the 100 kph speed limit signs on the gravel road. It was a good gravel road, but not THAT good! Milford Sound. We arrived at the Milford Sound Lodge after a scenic drive along the Milford Road. We checked in and showered, unpacked and generally made ourselves feel better. We booked kayak trips for the next day, which was quite the feat, in and of itself. We ended up getting the last two spots available for any kayaking trips the next day. Unfortunately, we were on different trips with two different providers, but at least we were both going kayaking. And turns out that we both got a buddy to kayak with because I had Peter, the guys we'd met on the Routeburn, on my trip, and Anne had Anna, our roomate at the Milford Sound Lodge, on her trip. We had a fun night relaxing and cooking a nice dinner with Peter. Well, Anne and Peter cooked and I spent my time trying to get ahold of the bus company to book spots on the bus back to Queenstown the next afternoon after our kayaking trips. For some reason, we weren't having the best luck with getting ahold of people - first the kayaking, then the busses. Intercity Bussing is amazingly difficult to reach for being such a major transportation company here. But it worked out well. I got tickets (fairly cheap, at that) all booked and paid for. Anne and Peter cooked up an excellent dinner of multiple courses: smoked cheddar and spicy thai tuna quesadillas for the starter and a pot of our remaining noodle packets and vegetables spiced up with a little of the grated smoked cheddar for the main course. After this, we hung out and I played "speed scrabble" with Peter, which I won. Barely. To top it off, I had to tell a story or a poem using all the words in my collection. It was quite the interesting story, due to the rather unique words I had to work with. I think my favorites were 'slap' and 'reiki.'