The Freewalkers Guide to the Milford Track: Day Three: I hate this place, Part 5.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007 at 7:16PM I paused for a second. It was actually five miles plus whatever I had to hike the next day. I looked down into the valley we were entering. Once we entered the forest below, we would be unable to see the cloud infested peaks. I hoped that the view would make me forget that I was half wet. And, for a split second, it did. I sat there, looking at millions upon billions of individual water drops falling over a strange landscape and realized that there was nothing to complain about, because the trail was merely living up to the rumors I had heard. Before we had left, several people had warned us that we would have wet boots for the whole trek.
Since we had made it halfway with dry feet, I couldn’t complain. The view was also spectacular, despite the rain. I also couldn’t complain because I had been in worse situations and survived. At this high endorphin moment, our group arrived at the Emergency Track (“ET”) gate. The night before, the Ranger had warned us that the main route for part of the track was closed because of the avalanche danger, and that we would have to take the ET which would rejoin the main track after a point.
At the time, sitting on a bench, it had sounded no more threatening than taking a surface street instead of the highway. In person, in the rain, it looked a little more suspect. The ET was just barely cut out of the brush, and its first downhill switchback was flooded out. As our boots were already soaked, there was no point in worrying about the water. We turned down two steep switchbacks with no issues, and then we came to the fourth switchback. From some unknown spot near the pass, a torrential river had started to flow. And, from another high altitude, a similar creek had begun to gush. The fourth switchback was their confluence. From that point on, as far as I could see, the trail became a river.
This was disconcerting. We certainly weren’t going to go back up to the main track, and risk being squashed flat in a rockslide or avalanche in a closed area. It also wasn’t appealing to wade in two to three feet of rushing water on a severely steep descent with nothing but mossy rocks under our boots. The drop-offs on either side of the route portended broken bones, or worse on any slips and falls. Even worse, there was no choice but to proceed.
On we went. We waded through water, feeling it tug at our balance, probing at loose rocks with our poles. The descent was further complicated by portions of the ET which I could only call “drops”. It didn’t matter to me whether our storm had washed out the trail ties and soil by itself, or it had been a winter of destruction. The fact was that on every other turn, there was a “drop” – a point where a three to four foot downward gap existed, and a mini-waterfall was created. Awkwardly, we progressed through all of these points, and had descended a fair amount, when we arrived at an even worse point.
Traveling constantly in small to large streams on loose rock was bad. It was worse still to traverse waterfalls and the gaps that they caused. Following the trail was extremely difficult. There were no signs on the emergency track to indicate that we were heading the right way. I only knew we were heading the right direction because of the ties and water breaks that had been strewn against the overgrown edges by the rushing water. I was also becoming ghastly tired with the constant downpour and unceasing cold wind. As we came out of one particularly treacherously steep slope through ankle breaking tree roots, the river surged again as it met up with even more runoff from six other sources.
It turned out that we had only passed seasonal creeks to this point, running high at places because of the rain. In front of us was an actual super-large seasonal river. It was not calf deep. It was knee to wait deep, and as it was on perhaps the steepest section of trail yet, was not rushing. It was tearing through the brush and bush, dragging anything in its path along. It was a good fifteen to twenty feet across. The other side had no sign of any trail. It was shrubs, trees, and rocks.
Reader Comments (8)
So true. So true!