Not all great walks are Great Walks. New Zealand has officially designated 11 multi-day hikes as a network of Great Walks, but there are plenty more that could easily qualify. The idea of a Great Walk is a multi-day hike in a highly scenic area on a well-maintained trail managed by the Department of Conservation (DOC). It started as both a marketing campaign to attract global tourism and a means of financing the upkeep of trails that were already becoming well-trod. 

We’ve now done all of one (the Milford Track) and parts of three (the Tongariro Crossing, Routebourne Track, and Abel Tasman Coastal Walk), plus plenty of hikes that are not on the list officially. I can officially say, in my capacity as an unofficial observer, that the Great Walks we’ve sampled are in fact great, but are just a subset of the many great walks available across this country.

Milford, a 33-mile, four-day hike in the South Island’s fjordlands, which we completed in November, is probably the most famous of the 11. The Queen Charlotte Track, a 45-mile, four-day hike in the South Island’s Marlborough Sound region, which we just completed in March, is not on the list. If there were a campaign to rectify that massive injustice, I would support it, because the Queen Charlotte is truly a great walk. 

Granted, the weather was not ideal to say the least when we were on the Milford and it was absolutely perfect when we were on the Queen Charlotte: mid-70s, light breeze, clear skies. No question that made a huge difference in our enjoyment of the hike—I doubt we would have felt the same joy every day had we been soaked by cold rain and wind, slipping on muddy hills, all the views cloaked by clouds. We absolutely appreciated the accomplishment of completing Milford with a group of fellow hikers, but we did not get the inspiring views and hiking comfort we might have if the weather had been better. 

There were other differences too, indicating that there’s a hike for every taste here. 

• The Queen Charlotte Track is a longer distance, but easier hiking, traversing a hilly peninsula, reaching altitudes of only 1300 feet or so, while Milford climbs through steep and rocky mountain passes nearly 4000 feet high. 
• Queen Charlotte is less remote: One end is only accessible by boat while the other end is reachable by car, where Milford requires a boat at both ends. You will see houses, lodgings of various types, and small settlements along the way, along with small boats and large ferries. Along the Milford, there are only DOC-managed huts and lodges, accessible by helicopter or on foot. 
• While the lodging and food on the Milford Track are excellent, Queen Charlotte takes comfort to a different level. The lodges are 4- and 5-star resorts and equally refined restaurants. Water taxis delivered our bags to each lodge before our arrival there, so all we carried while hiking was snacks, an extra layer of clothes for rain or cold, and water. On the Milford, we carried all our clothing, toiletries, and snacks for the four days. On the plus side, in Milford we refilled our water bottles from the many waterfalls we passed along the way, which lightened our load considerably.
• We were not attacked by swarms of sandflies on Queen Charlotte. Enough said.
  

In both places, we also learned a bit about the Maori origin stories of the regions, about Captain Cook’s arrival and encounters with the Maori who lived there, about what the areas might have looked like at that time vs. now. For example, there are few old-growth trees remaining in the Queen Charlotte region because most were cut or burned down by settlers trying to clear land for farming, only to realize that (a) the hillsides were too steep to farm, and (b) the soil had too much clay in it to grow crops. Perhaps they might have noticed that before burning all the native trees down, but hindsight is 20/20, right? 

And in both places, the scenery is gob-smackingly beautiful. While we likely missed the best views in Milford, we still saw plenty of jagged cliffs and towering waterfalls. But with better weather in Queen Charlotte, we got the full experience. Trails snake along ridges with a narrow, deep blue bay on the left and a luminescent Caribbean teal inlet on the right. Deep green, steep slopes climb up from the water to the cobalt sky. The colors are so vibrant they made us stop and stare every time we passed an opening in the trees.

Some forested sections feel like tree tunnels, where native songbirds tootle a spell-binding soundscape: like a band of piccolos, fifes, and penny-whistles tuning up, combined with beeps and chirps mimicking the droid R2D2 from Star Wars. Native palm trees and soaring tree-ferns share the slopes with leafy beech trees and the occasional conifer, as well as bleached-white Canadian pines that were imported, then nearly wiped out native species, and are now being killed off to allow the original species to regenerate. Fortunately, not all of the original trees were cut down: We did find one old-growth tree, a towering Rimu tree said to be more than 1000 years old.

Your call: Great Walk or just a great walk?

Granted, the Queen Charlotte has only been a destination hike since 2010, after a group of private property owners began working together in the 1980s to link up a network of bridle paths and mining trails with coastal hiking tracks. It is officially a part of the Te Araroa (the Long Pathway), a 3000-mile hike from the southernmost tip of New Zealand to its northern apex. On the track, we met a young American woman who was close to finishing her nine-week journey on the “TA” through the South Island, heading to the spot where we started our meager four-day hike, Ship’s Cove in Queen Charlotte Sound. She was exhilarated, hiking with a friend who had joined her for this final leg of her trek, both wearing paper crowns decorated with sparkles, glitter, and beads to celebrate their “Queens of the Trail” self-designations. Well-earned.

While America’s  Appalachian Trail and assorted other unsupported, long-distance hikes are an obvious parallel to the TA here, I struggle to think of a U.S. equivalent to the supported, lodge-to-lodge walks that are so prevalent here. Just as in Europe, there’s an infrastructure in place here that allows the less-equipped (some would say wimpier) among us to do a long hike without bringing all of our camping and cooking gear along, and especially without carrying it for days on end! Sure there are additional costs for that, but the beauty we have been able to see this way, and the sense of accomplishment for completing a long hike in a way that is still within our physical abilities, are priceless, just as the old credit card commercial used to say.

While we don’t have any more Great Walks(™) planned in our last month here, undoubtedly we will have more great walks. May you all have the same, in your own way, at your own speed.