Day Four: Quintin to Mitre Peak Lodge

Well, this is the last walking day - and it's the biggest one, too - without much altitude change, it will be a nice day to pace ourselves while taking in Bell Rock, MacKay Falls, Giant's Gate, and all the many views along the Arthur River Valley and Lake Ada.

We leave by 7:30 a.m. with the expectation of getting to Boathouse by 9 a.m. (roughly 5 miles at a nice pace). The day is bright and after yesterday's leg work-out, we're all feeling as though today will be a nice march out. The terrain today is sloping back down to sea level and it's fun to catch a breeze and smell the increasing amount of salt in the air, imagining how much closer we are getting to the Milford Sound and the Tasman Sea with each corner. The Arthur River and the surrounding mountain ranges carry enough fresh water into the bay we'll stay on tonight that it is named Fresh Water Bay. Our group's goal today, (besides hatching a plan to create some certificates to present to members on our trip who have left impressions upon us), is to make Sandfly Point (12 miles away) by 3:15 p.m. when the first of two boat launches would take us to Mitre Peak Lodge.

We are instructed after our 9 a.m. stop at the Boathouse to find a lunch spot wherever we start getting hungry. There wasn't any particular place to meet and the day is set up as more of a self-directed day (although you can't really wander too far off the trail unless you care to bushwack or go swimming in extremely cold water - which, by the way, you can drink without filtration...if I didn't gush about that already! [pun completely intended!] It saddens me to think that at one point not long ago we could drink the water up in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area without filtration as well, but there are too many JimBobs who use that area and don't remember what that ecological cycle means...maybe they can't spell it either...)

I'm sorry, I got off the track there, didn't I? Easy to do when you see so much beauty and realize how easy it is to misuse.

The Mildford 6 walks a bit apart for most of the morning, enjoying the different strides and those who still want to sing versus those who want to listen to the birds and their thoughts of an all-too-quick end to this enriching experience.

At lunch, we collect on a little bridge in an impossibly green thicket that's dripping with this clean water. There we enjoy our lunches, swinging our booted feet over a little brook. A couple of very special pictures get taken and we begin our final few miles. If I had taken as many photos as I wanted to on this trek, I would most likely still be there at about the mid-point. Nature was showing her stuff in this area and, as I said previously, you didn't want to misstep, but you didn't want to stop looking around you, either.
The track obviously began to widen after an hour or so and flatten out with a cathedral of trees honoring our final steps.

We are greeted with the hoped for and very welcome selection of hot drinks, snacks and plenty of smiles as we enter the Sandfly Point hut at trail's end. What we learn there is that our friend with the injured knee had been helicoptered out of Boathouse at about 1:30 p.m. (arriving more than three hours after we'd gotten there), so clearly, the knee injury had worsened since the trip up and over the pass the day before. We were all relieved to hear that our group would remain intact and that a medical evacuation wasn't necessary. Moments before our boat was to launch for Mitre Peak Lodge, the last of our guides arrives - having run most of the distance between Boathouse and Sandfly Point with a full pack. We in my group had taken a full 6 hours - including our lunch break (and hey! you've all seen how fit we are...) to make this same journey. But since guides are not to leave anyone behind in the group, one of them had to see off the helicopter at Boathouse. An amazing feat!

And while it seemed rather heroic, we are all still discussing whether or not this individual didn't have the helicopter make a special drop off - I mean, we've all seen marathon "runners" jump from the stands at the last moments of the race to join the pack, right? There were certain untruths told along the way, by said individual - something about geothermically heated lakes that were clearly not warmed in the least (and included eels as inhabitants!) and something else about seeing certain bird life and running for our lives - the source was truly in question by trip's end. And although I heard moaning the next day about sore muscles, there was never an interview with the helicopter pilot as verification of this Milford Mini-Marathon.

Again, I digress... The evening's activities were, in a sentence, summed up by "What Happens in New Zealand, Stays in New Zealand" and with our fill of lovely food provided by the Mitre Peak Lodge staff (Cheers, folks - well done on the rack of lamb!), we are presented with our certificates of achievement from our guides and those the Milford 6 created (although really, for putting up with us, the guides may themselves be due at least an extra retirement bonus!). The Milford Sound was a sight to see! And in the rain, no less...which was beautifully timed for the end of our journey!