We made a cracking start the next morning, making better than usual time up the rest of the ascent, stopping at the top of McKinnon’s Pass to get photos of the monument there, and to admire the breathtaking view of the valley we were to descend to. After rueing the guided walkers yet again for the hot Milo waiting for them, we pressed on.
Nearby was the highest point of the trek, so another stop to show us on top of the track, and then on to Pass Hut for lunch. Lunch, as all our lunch and dinners did, consisted of three courses, and today we quite took our time enjoying them – especially the hot soup.
It was quite extraordinary weather that we’d had so far. The Milford Track is smack bang in the middle of the “Roaring 40s” and get anywhere from 6.5-7.5m of rainfall per year depending on where you are. But we’d not yet seen any rain, and the ranger at Mintaro Hut (night 2) told us that there hadn’t been any rain for 8 days before that, and they were going through a drought. Certainly there were lots of dried up creek beds, and we hadn’t yet come close to breaking out the wet gear.
So maybe it was a touch of excitement that led Bryce and I to get fully wet-geared-up after feeling some spots of precipitation just before we left. Steve wasn’t there to feel anything, and thought we were nutters, but it had been predicted to rain, and we felt it, so we ignored his mocking and kitting up anyway.

What had distracted Steve was the Loo with a View, a drop toilet that has a gorgeous outlook over the Clinton Valley that we’d just spent two days climbing along and up. Never before has such a routine task looked so good!

And so the descent began. It was slow for most of the way, but that suited us just fine. We crossed another large creek that was completely dried up – we could see the ice on a nearby peak melting and running into the top of this creek, but there must have been so little of it compared to normal that it flowed under ground (or under the boulders that made up this creek bed) where we were.

Further down the track we came across perhaps the most beautiful scene of ht etrek, if not the whole of NZ. There were waterfalls, translucent and colourful; trees with every yellow, green and brown in the spectrum; rocks that were smooth and rugged; and the entire scene was like something from a magical fantasy. There was moss or fungus or flowers everywhere – nothing plain or dull wherever you looked, as though someone had contrived every fine detail.
We paused in a few places down this stretch, stopping finally when we found a place to get down to the water and put our feet in. Stephen, never the one to let serenity or wonder soothe a nearby soul screamed like a high-school drama queen when he dipped his feet in the water, and for a good while after, and then repeated the process another couple of times.
Churlish buffoonery aside, I experienced a real spiritual time at this place – even recalling it now, 6 weeks later, I feel peaceful and at ease.

Revived, inside and out, we proceeded onwards, and after quite a while arrive at the guided tourer’s huts where we dumped our packs and headed along the side track to Sutherland Falls. IT was a longer detour than we initially thought it would be, but it was pretty cool when we got there. These falls are the largest in NZ – 580m(?) high, made up of cascading segments, each of them higher than the mighty Victoria Falls, though only 10-20m wide (at this ‘drought’ time).

Bryce and I got changed into our togs, removed our shirts and set off to go in behind the falls. We didn’t go far before we were shivering, and it wasn’t far after that that we started getting so cold we were clenching our muscles and breathing heavily and yelling out to try and keep warm. We both made it behind the falls screaming like delirious football fans, proclaiming to the world (that couldn’t hear us because we were behind these big falls) that we were great kings over it! On the way back out, HRH Timothy Schier fell on his bum, and from there out we returned to the cold and wet real world – invigorated, but cold and wet, from our heads to our … shoes. Oh no, whose idea was it to go behind the falls in our shoes? Off they come and around we sit for an hour, drying them out.

Hypothermia seemed to have been avoided, so finally we headed off towards our packs, and then, with the sun setting around us, on to Dumpling Hut for our final night’s abode.

The Dumpling hut ranger was relieved to see us, as it was well into twilight when we arrived, and we were well after everyone else, and even after his night time briefing. No worries but, we made fast work of dinner and hit the sacks.