Milford Sound Favorites

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Transit New Zealand has an Information Kiosk 8,5 kilometres north of Te Anau, on the way to Milford Sound. It is open during winter when vehicles have to be fitted with chains. According to the info on the Transit website, this happens about 20 times a year between June and November. But be prepared that it could happen at earlier and later dates. We often have early snow in April and May, as happened this year (2009).

If you travel to Milford Sound in winter, never travel without chains in the boot of your car. But no reason to despair if you do not have any and get caught in snow in Te Anau. You can hire snow chains at the petrol stations. If you are not used to drive in wintery conditions, you better leave your car in Te Anau and get on a bus. Make sure that you choose a bus company that has accredited drivers who have passed training courses to improve their driving skills on snow and ice.

Be warned: If you venture out onto the road and police catch you driving past signs indicating that chains are required further down the road, they can fine you NZ$ 750.

Warning number two: Do not speed! The police are out and about and make speed controls. The fines are significant. They can even strip you of your driver’s license, and if you do not have a replacement driver, you have to leave the car where it is. You can be sure your rental company will charge you for recovering the vehicle. 100 km/h is the speed limit on the open road.

Just to give you an idea (as 21 May 2009):
This year (2009) we have had an early start of winter, with snowfall in April and May, and Milford Road has already been closed on several occasions.

Links:

http://www.transit.govt.nz/projects/milfordroad/RoadStatus.do
http://www.transit.govt.nz/projects/milfordroad/

Transit has a 24/7 freephone hotline:

0800 4 HIGHWAYS (0800 444 449)



Update 12 July 2009

Last week one Korean tourist died in a tour bus accident on the Milford Road, just north of Te Anau Downs. There the road is still flat and wide - but the bus slipped on black ice and rolled. A rescue helicopter had to fly four seriously injured passengers out to Dunedin and Southland hospitals.

The bus was from Christchurch. There has been no further information about the driver's qualification but it clearly was not a local company, and the company's name (Isuzu Journey) indicates that the driver might not have been familiar with such road conditions. However, I have to say, before putting all the blame on this guy, black ice is the worst thing that can happen while driving on this and other roads. But especially in the early morning hours you have to be prepared to such hazards and drive accordingly.

Here is the link to the story in "The Press":

http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/2581067/Korean-tourist-killed-as-bus-rolls-on-icy-highway

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The carparks for the vehicles of independent travellers are located near the café/restaurant, about 500 metres and more from the cruise terminal. A boardwalk leads to the terminal along the shore.

If you want to risk a last minute arrival, you have to add 5 minutes for racing from your car to the terminal and 10 minutes if you walk leisurely. And some minutes more if you intend to take some photos – which surely is nice because you might have a great view of Mitre Peak’s early morning reflections…

BTW Parking is free.

Bus parking is next to the cruise terminal. There is even a drop-off and pick-up zone directly in front of the entrance. Not that anybody gets lost in the confusing vast space of one single road... ;-)

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Hanging valleys are a typical feature of landscapes created by glaciers. The most obvious sign often are waterfalls plunging into the sea from overhanging rock faces.

When a huge glacier grinds its way, it might cross the path of smaller glaciers that have created side valleys. When this happens, a steep drop is created, and the smaller valleys end abruptly.

Some cruise boats get under the waterfalls. So if the captain talks about this intention you better listen to him and get inside if you do not want to take a shower.

The one you see on the photo is a semi-permanent fall from which water only tumbles into the fiord after heavy or a period of rain.

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As we are in a region where the rain gets measured in metres and not millimetres, you will be surprised to travel through vast dry grass landscapes before reaching the real rainforest. But those dry areas are all too natural, as the area east of Lake Te Anau lies behind high mountains that keep the westerly winds that bring heavy rain and snow at bay. It is the same phenonemon that makes the West Coast further north wet and the eastern regions dry. The South Island’s major faultline drops into the sea at Milford Sound. We often have reports about earthquakes off Milford Sound.

The grasslands are mixed with manuka, bracken (which is a hardy fern that does not need a lot of moisture) and young beech. Further on, in the Eglinton Valley, red beech becomes the dominant tree, and you also find some native grass- and wetlands. The latter include the Mirror Lakes where most travellers stop.

The further west you travel, the harsher the climate gets. This is the area where silver beech do not grow very tall. (You recognise them by their super tiny leaves that are evergreen in New Zealand – not comparable with the beech trees you find in Europe or elsewhere.) As almost certainly only I recognise the other plants that grow here, so I do not want to bother you with the names. Well, you might recognise the fuchsia – at least when they are in bloom in spring ;-) You might have them in your garden containers in summer, with much bigger flowers. The wild ones are small, and the colours are red outside and the inside is purple.

The big white flowers you might spot along the road closer to Homer Tunnel are mountain lilies (buttercups) and daisies, also called Mt. Cook Lilies and Daisies.

The silver beech is the dominant tree, growing taller again on the descent into Milford Sound, mostly covered in mosses that hang on the branches like beards. Now in this wet region you also see tree ferns which make New Zealand’s rainforest so appealing, and lots of mosses and smaller ferns.

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Although most of the world’s glaciers are melting you can see where they once have been. If you look out for the typical features of landscapes created by huge glaciers, you will find plenty such features along the Milford Road.

You will see hard rock debris of gneiss, diorite and granite, especially near the start of the Milford Road. This debris was deposited by a glacier that once filled Lake Te Anau. The valleys are U-shaped, steep, and their walls are bare rock face. The massive glaciers did this grinding work.

Do not miss to stop at the big carpark before Homer Tunnel: This is a cirque basin, carved by ice into a steep walled amphitheatre.

More information here:

http://www.teara.govt.nz/1966/M/MilfordSound/MilfordSound/en

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As I write this tip, I am sitting in the dry region of Canterbury, and it has been raining cats and dogs for several days now, interspersed with snow and hail, accompanied by gale force winds. The annual rainfall here is about 650 millimetres.

For some days now I have been screaming and laughing about the weather forecast on TV. It has been raining nearly everywhere in the country, and Milford Sound and Fiordlad have full sunshine. Their annual rainfall is measured in metres. They have nearly seven metres (6800 millimetres), so ten times our rainfall, and they have rain on about 180 days of the year, so every second day. And now obviously the sun does not stop shining. Crazy world.

It has been the same when I travelled to Milford Sound in February (2009). And I had no rain on my first visit. So the weather just MUST be better than the statistics ;-)))

Or not. Be it. I think when it rains, it rains, and it can rain for days, and those continuous falls happen more often than here where it is an absolute exception.

The Milford Road has been closed for wintery conditions several times this year already. So surely you should always check the road conditions before you travel. (See Transportation and Warnings & Dangers tips.) Like further north on the West Coast the highest rainfall is during the summer months, January being the month which brings most rain. Statistics-wise February is the best summer month to travel.

Also try to watch the weather forecast on TV, it comes near the end of the news of the two main TV channels TVNZ (TV One) and TV3. They are on daily from 6pm to 7pm.

More accurate forecasts are available on MetService. It is tricky to get to the exact locations, you first have to choose the mountain forecast, and only from there you get to Fiordland. Here is the direct link:

http://www.metservice.co.nz/public/mountain/fiordland.html

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The West Coast of the South Island, including the South-West, is the country of the greenstone, New Zealand jade. Maori call the greenstone Pounamu. The South Island’s Maori name – Te Wai Pounamu, the Land of Greenstone – refers to this fact. And greenstone was the main reason why the Maori travelled to Milford Sound on a track that has become the Milford Road.

Maori named Milford Sound Piopiotahi, after piopio, a single native thrush which now is probably extinct. Piopiotahi means: Place of the singing Thrush.

Permanent Maori settlements were located in the Hollyford Valley and around lakes Manapouri and Te Anau.

Milford Sound was named by a Welsh sealing captain John Grono after his birth place, Milford Haven. And obviously he had no idea what the difference between a fiord and a sound is :-)

Many places in the area are named after early European settlers. For example, the Sutherland Falls (along the Milford Track) which were named after the first permanent European settler, Donald Sutherland. (No, not the actor. This one was a Scottish prospector, sealer and ex-soldier. He also helped to cut the Milford Track, helped by a guy named Quintin Mackinnon. He “got” Mackinnon Pass…) Or think of the Homer Tunnel and Saddle, named after William Harry Homer who discovered the saddle in 1889.

James Cook had sailed the Endeavour close to Milford Sound in March 1770 already, but strong wind and heavy squalls forced him to keep well out at sea. In 1792 New Zealand’s first sealing gang was left in Dusky Sound and the slaughter of southern fur seals began. By the 1820s the seals were all but exterminated. Now they are protected, and you will see many on any cruise.

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It was a major undertaking to build the Milford Road, and it took nearly 30 years until the road and Homer Tunnel were finished in 1954 – but just as a gravel road at the time. No-one thought it was an appealing job to work in the remote wilderness of Fiordland, being subject to all kinds of wild weather, floods, snow, avalanches. So most of the men who worked on the road were more or less forced by the Government to take the jobs up during the Great Depression.

The section from Te Anau to the Divide (that is where the Routeburn, Caples and Greenstone Tracks start/end) was completed in the 1930’s. Work on the Homer Tunnel began in 1935. Difficult conditions and a break during World War II delayed the completion until 1953.

They had an incredibly hard life, and some died in hazards caused by the weather. Parts of the road, bridges and the tunnel portals had to be rebuilt because they crashed. Having encountered those incidents and to prevent further loss of life, the road was closed during winter until the late 1970’s. The tourism industry and fishermen were the driving force behind the appeal to keep the road open year-round. The last stretch of the road was sealed in 1992 only.

After a massive avalanche killed a road maintenance supervisor in 1983, a programme was established to monitor the avalanche risk on the Milford Road. Transit New Zealand introduced the internationally recognised Avalanche Control Programme. With this tool they are able to close the road with short notice, so nobody travelling there falls victim to nature. Still, from time to time there are still incidents, especially landslips after heavy rainfall.