The Box:

 

To commit to the Dusky Track, you have to have an almost sick fascination with displeasure. You spend less time walking the trail, as you do wading through the very guts of it. And after seven days in Fiordland, we emerged bruised, pruned, and very well acquainted with all species of mud. 

 

Admittedly over-confident, Lily and I chose the Dusky because of the challenge it presented. As the daughters of two seasoned mountaineering buddies, we had grown up being persuaded up perilous cliff sides and hiked through mountain passes with pint-sized camel packs strapped to our backs. Our very friendship began en-route to Everest Base Camp, which our fathers witnessed with the utmost joy and concern for the monstrous duo they had brought together. Most dangerously, what we found in each other was an eerily similar traveller and thinker. Neither of us knew how to turn down an adventure, and an adventure is exactly what the Dusky promised us. 

 

Despite our egos, we knew we couldn’t go it alone, so we managed to convince both of our older brothers that this was the perfect pre-Christmas outing for us all. Myles - itching to get out of Auckland after a long, first post-grad semester - immediately jumped at the chance. Alexander pretended to ‘check his schedule’, but as an expedition junky and major tree enthusiast, we knew he wouldn’t pass up the opportunity either. 

 

The Dusky isn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision and is only properly handled by experienced trekkers and outdoorsmen. The prehistoric terrain is relentless, the trail is more often river or bog than path, and when above the tree line, you are left exposed to the constant gusts of wind and rain - if you have good weather. Covering a kilometer on the Dusky is like covering five kilometers on any other trail, and one has to come prepared for any manner of unearthly surprises. The Dusky takes unique pleasure in testing your will and attempting to crush your spirit. We spent as much time admiring the landscape as we did wrestling with it: we pulled our fully-submerged legs from gloopy, suctioned mud, hoisted our packs above our heads to wade through chest-deep water, and precariously tip-toed across half-rotted logs. It’s no wonder that of the estimated 100 people who attempt it yearly, only 50% complete it - the rest either opt to turn back or call an emergency air-lift out. 

 

From the get-go, Dusky is a bit of a logistic nightmare. Sandwiched between two massive lakes, the only way to reach either end is by hour-long boat ride. On the Lake Manapouri side, large ships dock daily to take you from the West Arm back to civilization, whereas, the small, battered ‘Namu’ crosses Lake Hauroko once every Thursday and is only offered by one company. For this reason, the Dusky Track is usually done from Lake Hauroko to Lake Manapouri. If you walk the opposite way, you leave little wiggle room for any errors and delays you’ll inevitably face, and risk being trapped at the Hauroko Burn hut for a week (which, trust me, you do not want) or having to turn around and walk the whole thing back in reverse (which crazy people have been known to do). Having already reconciled with the fact we may have bitten off a little more than we could chew, we opted to trek north, ending at Lake Manapouri. 

 

Lifting The Lid:

 

Standing on a sun bleached jetty at the edge of Lake Hauroko, I could make out a perfect rainbow, and then beyond it, dark thunder clouds. They swirled around richly green land masses jutting out of the lake’s shores, shrouding the ridge lines in an ominous haze. While there was no wind where we stood, we could see white capped waves in the distance; the top layer of the world’s deepest lake was swaying and shifting with impatience. It was time to cross. 

 

Sprays of fresh water punctuated each rise and fall of the boat as we made our way across the lake. Magnificent waterfalls plummeted down the dark cliff faces from breaks in the undergrowth. Despite the threatening clouds ahead, the sky above us remained clear - a solitary mercy. This single spotlight of blue followed us to the opposite end of Lake Hauroko and to the beginning of the Dusky Track.

 

The trail began mercifully. A thin, meandering path that crossed over small brooks and rotting logs. We floated waist deep through thick underbrush, our legs disappearing beneath mammoth, prehistoric ferns. Only the thick squelching of our boots reminded us of our precarious footing. 

 

It took about 10 minutes for the water and mud to find its way through our (supposedly) waterproof trousers, gators, and then boots. A 6 foot 4 Myles sunk up to his mid-thighs on the liquid trail of moss and mud and rinsed the molten residue off in a knee-high river crossing with a pole-bending under-current and slippery river bed. We squelched our way up the opposite bank, and I wiggled my toes to make sure the frigid river water hadn’t shocked them into complete stillness; they were soggy, they were stiff, but they (at this point) still had the courage to smush around inside my soupy boot. 

 

This first day was an aggressive natural culture shock, and we toddled around like babies learning to walk, too often looking up as a well-hidden, mud-slathered tree root clipped the toe of our boots. On the Dusky, you walk or you watch. You do not do both. But we couldn’t help ourselves. Completely isolated from the world, Fiordland has remained untouched and unchanged for thousands of years. It’s no wonder James Cameron based Avatar’s alien planet, ‘Pandora’, off of this wilderness. Goliathan trees, feasting on the deep, stewed earth and covered in thick layers of moss and fungi, rise up towards the low hanging clouds. All noise is muffled and diffused through layers of underbrush, and there is a constant rustle of rain as it drips down tree trunks and rock faces. While you eventually grow accustomed to the many shades of mud, you never quite get used to the amount of green: fluorescent twiglets spring out from decaying logs, emerald ferns brush past at shoulder height. The Fiordland landscape is other-worldly and teems with healthy, rich life. 

 

Standing on the Edge:

 

Hoisting myself up over the top of a rolling ‘hill’ marked the true beginning of our traverse across the Pleasant Range. Behind me, I could see the lime green and red pack covers of Lily and Myles maneuvering their way up an almost vertical toussocked incline. I’d put an awful lot of faith in the fluffed up bits of earth and grass I’d used to scale this incline. Luckily, they were more steadily stuck to the ground than I was. 

 

From the top of the ridge, Lake Roe Hut, from which we had left almost an hour ago, was still less than a kilometer away. Sharp, misty rain stung against my cheeks as Alexander appeared from the grass wall below, followed by Lily, then Myles. We broke into two smaller groups, Myles and Alexander moving ahead, while Lily and I fell behind, occupied by the need to keep 360°-ing our surroundings. 

 

The whole pass was an eerie, colourless maze compared to the kaleidoscope of green we had emerged from yesterday afternoon. In front of us, golden strips of grassland wove around dark grey pools of water. The land rose and fell in gentle hills and mist hugged the deep green peaks disappearing off either side of the pass. We stood and watched with slackened jaws as the clouds broke momentarily over the mountain range to our west, revealing tall snowy peaks in white-gold light. It disappeared in a matter of moments, leaving Lily and I to wonder if it had been a mirage; it was the first time we had seen the sun in days. 

 

While the ascent up to and across the Pleasant Range had been reasonably manageable, the descent down to Loch Maree would deeply humble and startle us. The track dropped a near 1,000 vertical meters in just under two and a half kilometers and all but turned into an intricately woven natural ladder: sodden, slick, blackened tree roots - sometimes bright silver chains bolted to rock faces - were the only way down. Lily, always quick on the descent, swiftly disappeared back into the belly of Fiordland forest. Alexander and I took up the middle for sometime, yelping an occasional “COO-WEEEE” into the trees to eco-locate Lily in front of us and Myles just behind. It was a long, arduous few hours navigating our way down tree root hand and foot holds. Water poured down the track, numbing our fingers and weighing down our mud-caked gear. Alexander decided to plow ahead towards Lily, while I agreed to stay back with Myles (who was understandably finding the shear drop and slickness of this section particularly stomach flipping). 

 

When Myles and I finally made it to the bottom of the ravine, we snaked through a section of black-barked trees beside a near overflowing white-water river. Tired, dripping, and hungry, we were dreaming of Loch Maree hut - which I knew was now less than a kilometer and one wire bridge crossing away. Up ahead, I saw a small shelter which I knew from the map meant we were almost to the bridge. I should have felt euphoric, but I instead had an immediate rush of dread and doubt. On the front hand post of the open-faced shelter hung Lily’s neon-orange raincoat. 

 

Falling Inside:

 

Lily had stripped out of all her wet layers and was tucked deep inside her sleeping bag to keep warm and wait for our arrival. The reality was this: the 30 meter long wire bridge spanning the Seaforth River had been completely washed away, and in the ceaseless rain, the river had swollen up over the banks. White-water currents from the waterway we had passed earlier fed directly into this larger channel, giving it a dangerous undercurrent. We had two choices: to swim it or to stay in the primitive shelter overnight. On any other track, in any other circumstances, the latter would have been our choice. But the damp and cold was quickly chilling even our marrow and we had no hopes of building a fire for warmth. There was also the added possibility that the river could worsen overnight.

 

The plan, in theory, was simple. Using the old remaining bridge posts, Alexander and Findal (one of only two other people on the trail at the time) were to fasten a raft for us to tie our packs to. We would then all swim the river, push the raft to the other side, unload on the bank, and make our way to the hut before hypothermia could set in.

 

Lily, Myles, Peter (Findal’s trekking buddy), and I boiled water, and we shared it around the six of us, hoping to warm our insides as much as possible beforehand. We stripped down to bare minimum clothing, and with our packs as water-proofed as possible, left the shelter in single file towards the waiting raft. 

 

The path quickly gave way to swollen river bed and we waded knee, thigh, and finally waist deep into frigid, murky water. Our boots were heavy, waterlogged, and completely invisible as we blindly searched for footing on the flooded forest floor. The raft was looped around the branch of a semi-submerged tree and was made up of two long wooden posts, held together with two metal A-frames and Findal’s rope (which we apologized for teasing him about afterwards). We stacked our packs front to back, looping waist straps to the body of the raft and chest straps to the pack in front of it - they looked like colourful turtle shells perched on a log. Alexander broke off a stick from a nearby tree and threw it upstream. We watched as it rushed back past us in a matter of seconds.

 

‘That’s how fast the current is.’

 

We waded out to the true edge of the river bed where the water turned from a dusky shade of green to inky charcoal. Alexander was at the front point, with the rope slung over his shoulder, Findal and I were on the left and right hand side of the first A-frame, Peter and Myles on either side of the second, and Lily was poised to push from the back. 

 

‘There’s our landing point.’ 

 

We all followed Findal’s finger to a tiny patch of green grass on the opposite bank some hundred meters downstream. If we missed that three meter stretch of land, we would be dragged out into Loch Maree. We had already made the call to keep swimming if someone were to lose their grip and be separated from the raft: ‘float downstream and into the Loch, then try and swim for the hut.’ We’d all nodded solemnly. 

 

The sky was momentarily still, the rain stopped; Fiordland fell quiet. Then the breaking of water around the body, a sudden rush and gurgle as we all pushed forward into the current. We were being dragged immediately, fighting our heavy boots and the raft’s weight. There was shouting and splashing and desperate groans. My knuckles turned purple and white on the silver A-frame. From my upstream position I had no idea how close we were to our proposed landing point, but it seemed as though the opposite bank was still too far away, and that we had already been pushed too far down. We were swimming for our lives: single minded and desperate. In front of me, a fluorescent patch of green suddenly came into view - our landing space, our one chance. Alexander lunged at the bank, one hand gripped the mud and grass while the other clung to the  raft’s nose. There was a moment of relief, and then the raft’s body swung around, pushed downstream by the current. Lily yelled from the back, thrown from her position by the force. She reached out to grasp anything that would hold her, her pointer and middle finger miraculously hooked under a loosened pack cover and held. Findal and Peter were pinned between the raft and the bank, the protruding A-frames gave them just enough space to hoist themselves out and up. Myles worked his way around the back and up the bank behind Lily, who was using a long hanging tree branch as leverage. I pushed against the current and around the front of the raft toward Alexander’s extended hand. 

 

We were mindless, mechanic; intent. Per our plan, we removed Lily’s pack first, and Alexander ran ahead with it to start a fire with the fire starters inside. The rest of us dragged the five remaining twenty kilo bags off the raft and onto the bank. Findal tied the raft to a tree (an issue we would revisit when not pre-hypothermic) and we all made for the hut. Our legs were like heated jelly. Lily and I were acutely aware of how warm our bodies felt despite having been neck deep in ice cold water. Peter, Findal, and Myles took to chopping wood for the fire. We had no idea how long it took us to get from the river’s edge to the woodstove’s sizzling perimeter. 

 

Loch Maree hut was somewhat of a dream. The tiny, beige hut nestled at the edge of a loch was embraced on either side by deep green, forested cliffs. To the right, and just visible through the tiny upper inside window, a waterfall erupted from the mountainside and disappeared back into the trees below. The clouds would split and re-knit together to reveal patches of smokey light. We took our evening tea, and then our morning oatmeal, overlooking this view. 

 

It was at this point, a minor cut just below Alexander’s kneecap became a main concern.

 

  

Dodging Terrors: 

 

The walk to Supper Cove was no less difficult or poorly marked than the track we had walked thus far, but with no major verticals and all the wire bridges intact, the fifteen kilometer stretch to the hut felt easy. Lily and I spent most of the day merrily hopping from tree root to moss patch to dodge the bogs. We had been warned that the final stretch to the hut was a potential chest deep wade through seawater if arriving during high tide, which (of course) we arrived just in time for. Lily and I hoisted our packs up above our heads and began wading through neck height ocean water. Thankfully, our packs were comparatively lighter than usual. We had left a majority of our gear back at Loch Maree since we would be passing back through tomorrow afternoon en route to Kintail Hut. We had made the day trip out to Supper Cove for one thing and one thing only: the promise of fish. 

 

The sandflies were the worst yet. They nipped at our eyelids and ears. We snorted heavily every couple breaths in case any had tried to find safe passage up our nostrils. For all this suffering, we had only caught one small fish so far. Alexander cast our primitive fishing line and hook out into the cove and it snagged on a protruding branch. We formed a counterbalance by linking hands and leaning away from Alexander as he stooped over the slippery edge to free the line. He was about to succeed when he suddenly sprung backwards, his right foot lifted up like a cat who had distastefully dunked his foot in water. In the space where he once stood, the glistening brown nose of a shark dropped back below the surface of the water. We watched it swim along the length of the rock we stood on, its meter and a half long body rippling just below the surface. Then it turned and disappeared back into the cove. 

 

‘I think one fish is enough, don’t you?’

 

We feasted on our tiny catch that night. After days of dehydrated meals and oatmeal, the fresh fish tasted decadent. 

 

We rose the next morning in high spirits, and for the first time all trip, dry clothing. This was a short-lived joy. We left the hut and immediately found ourselves, once again, chest-deep in the cove crossing (this time very aware that we shared the water with a rather bolshy shark). We finished the first fifteen kilometers back to Loch Maree Hut just before midday, and sat down for a brief lunch before continuing ten more to Kintail Hut. This section was relatively flat and straightforward but seemed to go on forever. The trail markers (to my personal displeasure and dismay) were often stuck to fallen, rotting logs, hidden from view, or gone altogether. Lily and I spent the majority of our time doubling back on ourselves and walking around the edges of clearings trying to glimpse those elusive tiny orange triangles. It didn’t take long for hysterics to take over. Sometime after crossing a stream which perfectly resembled that from the movie Brother Bear, I launched into a passionate rant about disorder and disorganization that saw us through the next three kilometers. Lily spent the majority of this time desperately trying not to pee from laughter.

 

Crawling Up the Side:

 

Our final full day saw us up and over Centre Pass, with a technical vertical incline to rival our descent to Loch Maree. Rising another 1,000 meters in just over a kilometer and a half, we hoisted ourselves up through tree-rooted riverbeds and mossy rock faces. Halfway up the trail was a fallen tree that would have felt no less manly situated in a redwood forest. Its base and roots were still wrapped over a sheer rock face, completely blocking our path. Alexander, a comfortable climber, scrambled up and over, but I could tell by the concentrated furrow in his brow as he traversed the final section that this wasn’t a viable option for the rest of us. I instead decided to make my way up through the logs rotting interior, shimmying through the decaying trunk and out an opening near Alexander’s feet. I emerged directly in front of a happy orange trail marker and gave it the finger.

 

Centre Pass opened up like a tongue extended from a cavernous throat. We were greeted by the same golden tussocks as the Pleasant Range. They filled the space between two large cliff walls that extended back into a bowl shaped incline. Sporadic waterfalls plummeted from the tops of the cliffs and we filled our bottles and drank the crisp, fresh water. Alexander was moving swiftly ahead, now with a noticeable limp. His knee had swollen up three times the size in the last two days, and his only goal now was to get from hut to hut as quickly and painlessly as possible. Myles, Lily, and I had another agenda. We slowly made our way up the basin towards the waterfall directly at its curved apex. We had all realised some time ago that the only way out of this basin was all the way up and over that waterfall. We snaked our way up in wordless resolve. At the top, we stopped for a quick snack; the damp on my fingers bled the dye in my m&m’s, turning the tips of my fingers rainbow. We munched quietly, scanning the valley below from which we had come. The clouds descended down around the dense forest, as if once again shutting the lid over Fiordland. It was - quite literally - all downhill from here. 

 

A gentle, grassy marsh would fade into trees and bush once again. The usual impediment would present itself; a 3 meter tall rock-walled drop which Lily would inch her way across the top and down the side of while I'd opt to sit and slide down on my ass, landing in knee deep gloop at the bottom. We’d sloop and slop and sink our way to our final hut, plowing directly through deep bog or flooded path without attempting a dryer alternative. If the Dusky had taught us anything, it was that to avoid mud in one clearing was to nearly drown in it the next. On our final morning, we rose before dawn and made a last push to Lake Manapouri’s West Arm, arriving muddy, soaked, bruised, but very much wanting to turn around and do it all again. 

 

Closing the Box:

 

To put it simply, the Dusky Track was miserable. Cold and wet and difficult, it was a track and terrain that should never be underestimated. Crossing the Dusky’s threshold was like cracking open Pandora’s Box. We spent seven days struggling our way through a world which didn’t care about us and took great pleasure in reminding us how small, inconsequential, and easily sinkable we were compared to the dinosaurian forest. Each soul crushing, mind bending, stomach flipping, foot tripping day took us further away from our world and deeper into the Dusky’s: brilliant greens we could never have imagined, trees with trunks thicker than we were tall, waterfalls birthed from nothing more than flat-topped cliffs and heavy rain. The Dusky was not something to be feared or conquered or defeated; it was something to be revered. When the clouds rolled in and the rivers rose, we found ourselves catching our breath, because this was Fiordland in its most honest, beautiful - and yes - miserable and terrifying, form; and we had just peered directly into it.