When staying at the huts, you have to hang up your boots, so the pesky Keas won't try to eat them. If they are on the ground, they will push them against the ground or a wall with one leg, stabilize it with the other, and pull them apart with their beak!! So all hikers hang their boots.
Soo....We don't have many pictures of the second 2 days because it was so rainy we couldn't take out our camera. One of the few times we wished we had a waterproof camera!! On day 3 we went up and over McKinnon pass, up the many switchbacks, and it was so cold and windy and rainy. At one point, I was going up/over a big step, when the wind picked up and caught my pack cover like a sail -- and blew me completely over. In my pack, like an upside down turtle. It was a VERY strong wind. I think it must have looked pretty funny to anyone watching (ie, Patrick), but we didn't stop to think about it, I just jumped up and we pushed on through the wind and the rain. I asked Patrick about it later, because I was like, "Wow. That must have been really funny! I BLEW over!" And Patrick said, that yes, it was really funny, but it didn't seem like the right time to point out to his wife how funny it was that she blew over in the wind and the rain...And he was right. :) (We stopped and pulled out the camera here to take a picture of what we thought was a Kiwi, but was actually a Weta -- another flightless bird of NZ that likes to make tourists think he's a Kiwi during the daytime....)
From McKinnon Pass we hiked down to the last hut, Dumpling Hut, did a few "stream" crossings on our own, thankfully there were very tall posts that showed us where the trail was. On the last day, the hut ranger announced that the river had burst its banks, the water was very high and dangerous, and that we were hiking out with her (the last option is a helicopter, apparently it wasn't that bad...). She designated 2 people to go first, 2 people to go last, and the other 36 of us went in between. We hiked out at a fair pace, no bathroom breaks for a few hours, until there was mutiny at a rest-stop with a latrine, when a few of us raced to go before we got left. We had to do so many "stream" (rushing, torrents of water) with arms linked in groups of 3 or 4, and we hiked several hundred meters in calm water that was up to our waists. We never would have known where to go without the Ranger guiding us!! Once we got through the dangerous spots, she let us loose, and we raced the rest of the way down to the Boat Shed to make our 2 pm boat back to Milford, for our 3 pm Milford Sound cruise...
We made it in time to tear open our packs, put on dry clothes (again, with the other 38 friends who had joined us on the hike!), and jump on a warm, dry cruiser with lots of German and Asian toursits for some hot drinks...and we took in the hundreds of waterfalls from the cushy seats inside the boat!
BEST. BACKPAKING. TRIP. EVER.
Wow. :)
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