The last day of hiking is the longest (13 miles) so we woke early again to make a timely start.  Once more, a cloud ceiling had formed overnight halfway up the fjord walls and stayed put until mid-day.  This section of trail is forested and undulates gently up and down.  It follows the Arthur River to Sandfly Point at the head of Milford Sound.  Due to the mist and the trees, the fjord walls were often out of sight, leaving bridges and waterfalls as the major sights of the trail, alongside the occasional massive boulder or gnarled tree trunk.

The Milford Track includes enough different  styles and span lengths of bridges to warm the heart of any civil engineer.  Some of them are rated for only a single crosser at a time, while others allow for many more.  We most enjoyed the “swing bridges”, that typically cross the largest spans.  They live up to their name, swaying back and forth as you cross, and with several people crossing at once, the unpredictable lurching makes it hard to stay upright.  One of the longest bridges crosses the Arthur River just downstream of the Boatshed, which was used to house the vessels that ferried hikers across in the days before the bridge was built.  These days it serves as a trail shelter – in fact, the trail goes right through it!

One of the topics of conversation on the trail is which waterfall is each person’s favorite.  Besides Sutherland Falls, the other major contender is Mackay Falls, which we saw today.  The two namesakes were actually exploring the region together, and Mackay claimed the first large waterfall they found.  Biding his time, Sutherland ended up with the larger of the two, but not everyone finds it the most aesthetic.  

A neat side feature near the base of Mackay Falls is Bell Rock, so-called because of the shape of the cavity carved inside it.  It is unassuming from the outside, seemingly no larger than countless other crannies in the large rocks alongside the trail.  If you take the time to crawl inside, you’ll find a surprisingly large hollow within, with plenty of room for a group of people to stand together inside.  Legend has it that the record for most occupants stands at 29, but we’re not sure we believe it.

Bird of the day: the sandfly.  Sticklers may object that this is not a bird at all, but they fly, they are ever-present, and there are certainly a lot of them in this region.  A Māori legend tells that they were released here by a goddess lest the land be so perfect that the humans would never leave it.  Warned in advance, we had armed ourselves with repellant oil and mesh head covers just in case.  We used the former liberally and the latter not at all. Actually, the sandflies are not too troublesome as long as you keep moving, so we mostly contended with them at rest stops.

By lunchtime the mist had dried up and we had sunny blue skies again.  Our lunch spot was the field of river rocks at the base of Giant’s Gate Falls, where a stream bursts through a cloven rock face and tumbles into an icy cold pool.  The spray from the falls deters the sand flies, enabling us to have a lovely and unpestered lunch break “on the rocks”.

During the final leg of the track, we could finally see tall mountains around us again as we skirted the shores of Lake Ada.  A short section overlooking the lake was the last to be completed, hacked out of the cliff face in the 1890s by Irish miners using hand tools and dynamite.  Finally reaching the terminal marker at Sandfly Point, we celebrated with tea and cookies. 

Getting to Milford Landing from the trail’s and required another short boat trip, which we made in several small groups. Since the landing at Milford Sound is part of Fiordland National Park, there are no hotels or private homes except for two facilities that predate the park’s formation in the 1950s. We therefore felt like royalty, being allowed to stay at the Mitre Lodge, one of the two grandfathered establishments. It is run solely for hikers of the Milford Track, and our room’s window featured an iconic view of Mitre Peak presiding over the Sound. Supposedly the most photographed mountain in New Zealand, Mitre Peak is rarely witnessed as we saw it today, without a shroud of mist obscuring its steep sides.