A Notable Walk (1)

"You're late." the man at the reception desk of the Department of Conservation says, "Tickets for the Milford Track are supposed to be picked up before ten."
This is true, but I rattle out the practised excuse that when I had last spoken to someone from this office, trying to find out information about the shuttle buses linking Queenstown to Te Anau, I had been recommended the very same bus which had just dropped us off - as late as accused.
The man waves his hand dismissively, he's already scanning the list of names on the print-out before him and replaces the discrete cross beside my name with a tick. He is young, but dressed as he is in khaki shirt and shorts, he is only a pith helmet and a handle-bar moustache shy of looking as though he has stepped out of some fifties jungle adventure serial.
He pushes a book of tickets across the desk towards me and then prods another printout before him: this one baring a simple line map overlaid with a complex design of contour lines swirling in tight, ominous whorls.
"Have you seen the weather forecast for the next four days?" He asks.
"Uh, no." I admit, leaning across the desk to try and decipher the page before him. He turns in around as though it might help. I blink at it uselessly.
"Let me put it this way," he says, "Do you have a waterproof pack liner?"
"Yes." I say.
"Do you have waterproof over-trousers?"
"Yes."
"Can you swim?"
I look up at him sharply and it is only with moderate relief that I see he is grinning. He nods at the door behind me.
"That's your bus that's just turned up." he says.

The Milford Track is New Zealand's most famous footpath. A four day, fifty-three kilometre hike from the tip of Lake Te Anau to the innermost reaches of the Milford Sound. It is also the most regimented, the most expensive and - if the long standing slogan is to be believed, the finest walk in the world.
This particular piece of hyperbole - one which New Zealand's Department of Conservation is more than happy to perpetuate - is attributed to Blanche Baughan, a Surrey-born poet who moved to New Zealand in 1900 and was commissioned to write a series of articles for the London Spectator. The title of her 1908 piece on the Milford Track was changed by her sub-editor from the rather modest 'A Notable Walk' to 'The Finest Walk in the World.'
The few quotes I could find from the article itself, suggest that Baughan was not above a little overstatement herself:

'This track, anyone possessing feet to walk with, eyes to see with and a love for nature at her loneliest and fairest could scarce do better than essay. And from the variety, the beauty and the scale of the scenes through which it passes, it must certainly be accounted one of the most glorious natural wonders of the world.'

Nearly one hundred years later, the popularity of the track means that the route is anything but lonely. Around ten thousand trampers cross the route each year, but restrictions imposed by the Department of Conservation keep numbers to only forty independent and twenty guided walkers per day on each stretch of the track. With different accommodation assigned to each group, the theory is that they should never meet, and so with only up to thirty-nine familiar faces to be encountered along the route, there is a fragile illusion of isolation, which most seem happy to buy into.

For the independent walker, the expense of the track stems from the difficulties involved in accessing it. The start of the walk at Glade Wharf is reached by a combination of bus and ferry from Te Anau.
"In the unlikely event of an emergency," the skipper of the ferry announces, "Emergency exits are over which ever side of the boat you happen to be near."
A hand raises from his audience.
"Is there an alarm?" Someone asks.
The skipper nods seriously.
"Oh yes," he says, "It sounds like me screaming like a little girl."
Although the promised bad weather looked to have been getting ready to unleash itself before the ferry had even left its moorings, about half way up the lake, the grey-white clouds relax enough for a glimmer of blue to emerge from between them. Before long, most of the ferry's passengers have huddled up on the top deck to stand defiant against the rails and watch the scenery swell before us. The wind roars in our ears and waters our eyes, and the deck is full of the sound of waterproof jackets snapping and crackling as they flap around us. The mountains, snow-capped giants hulking around the edges of the lake, glower over us as we approach. To the east, we can glimpse the alternate land route to the Clinton Valley where the walk begins, the high and imposing path across Dore Pass which has claimed a number of walkers both over-confident and under-prepared. The engine of the ferry judders reassuringly beneath us - those of us on board satisfied that we might class ourselves adventurous, but only in the safest and least adventurous sort of way.