- Time
- 27 days, including side-trips, tent days and weather delays (about 14 full days' walking on the traverse)
- Grade
- Difficult
- Access
- Float plane to South Port at southern end of traverse. Other possibilities include Cliff Cove and Long Sound. Tourist launch across Lake Manapouri at northern end (as for Dusky Sound Track)
- Map
- Topo50 West Cape, Long Sound, Cooper Island, Lake Roe, Deep Cove
A trio of Australians fight the sand flies and weather on a 28-day journey through southern Fiordland. By Ian brown
“WhaaAAT?” I screamed, trying to make myself heard above the rolling waves of wind and rain; the gun-cracking nylon of our tent. A faint cry had emerged from Rik’s tent but then flown off into the valley. He tried again. The same words had rung out before, and would again before we reached our journey’s end: “I’M PACKING UP!” A bloodless dawn was creeping through the fabric after another wild night. Grant and I felt a little more secure in our sturdy dome, but Rik was not so sure his lightweight job could take the strain. With a week still to go, it was no place to lose a tent. Rik had spent most of the night sitting up, braced against the pole. Apparently he didn’t want to hold it up any longer. “Okay. Us too!” I yelled, as Grant and I slowly roused to the task. It was our highest camp in weeks of walking, 1500m up on an unnamed shoulder of an unnamed mountain on an unnamed range in the tangled hills of southern Fiordland. And I wouldn’t have been anywhere else for quids. Standing around would be dangerous, so we crawled out of the tents together, jammed them into our packs and got away fast. Battling wind-blasts, eyes stinging, we stumbled over rocks and around a knoll, into a wind-shadow. Then we could pick our way down a rocky cirque-wall above the North Branch of Florence Stream. Soon we were in relative calm, on easy ground, and could enjoy a stroll along the floor of the hanging valley, graced with brimming streams, rich green moss and wildflowers. After just an hour we camped again, in the hope that another day would see us clambering in sunshine along the high ridges. It was a peaceful place to reflect on both where we wanted to go next, and how far we had already come. I first devised a plan about 30 years ago, inspired by the isolation and gothic name of the Dark Cloud Range, and by the gobsmacking glory of Fiordland’s mountains. With their wind-tossed tussock, scoured rocks, rolling grassy tops and a cornucopia of lakes, the lower ranges lend themselves to long, adventurous walks above the bushline – of a sort that can be relished in few other places in the world. There’s only one real problem: the sand flies…no, wait, I meant to say the weather. Yes, the weather. Of course. I was camped at Mt Cook when Three Johns Hut blew away in 1977, and in the Olivines when 24 inches of rain flooded the West Coast one day in 1982. I knew what weather was. And I’d spent cut-glass days high on the bevelled ridges of the Darrans. I knew what the potential was. From a hub where the Dusky Sound Track crosses the Main Divide, ridges spoke out south-west and south into the fiords. One of these spokes is formed by the Heath Mountains and then the Dark Cloud Range. The plan was to traverse these hills from the coast to Lake Manapouri. February is the driest summer month, on the numbers, so that was when we took our chances. [caption id="attachment_32394" align="aligncenter" width="1280"]

