It will take you slightly longer to walk from Lake Roe to Loch Marie than it did from Halfway Hut, though this will come as a surprise when you seem to have walked 3/4 of the way there over pleasant snow-grass tops sprinkled with myriad jewel lakes and you are gazing down on the Loch and its tree trunks just a kilometre below you. That last kilometre is a doozy!
Looking back towards the hut from lake Roe look-out reveals the way ahead towards Loch Marie.
Looking down from the climb in the previous photo.
Last view of Lake Roe and its hut.
A myriad jewel lakes.
Mist magic.
Looking up the Seaforth towards Centre Pass.
First view of the Fiord and the sea faraway.
The last tarn before the perilous descent.
Loch Marie seems so close down there: It is. One false move and you will be there.
But it is not without its beauty.
It is horrendously steep. Not a track at all, but more like some horrific ladder mostly made of tree roots and rocks. Here and there a chain for support.
It is a nightmare descent which seems as if it will go on forever.
But finally it does come to an end (after 3+ hours!)
There is an emergency shelter in case the river is too high.
A very long, high walk wire if it is not quite so high, or you can cross below the walk wire if it is low, like this,
A very pretty waterfall to look at.
The lake of course with its many tree trunks.
And just a quarter hour’s stroll from the walk wire the cosy Loch Marie hut on an elevated peninsula overlooking the lake and the river – shown here with a fairly cold son Bryn in 2008. Mind you he wasn’t so cold that he failed to have a swim in the Seaforth at the end of the day to freshen up!
BTW: The deer culler’s used to use the Jane Burn (just downstream of the current track) to access the tops and travel across to Lake Roe etc. It is a much easier walk but would require some bush-bashing. Val McKay (one of them and who used to run the Dusky Transport for many years) told me that the DOC asked him to mark a route straight up from the Loch to a vantage point where you could see the fiords once when he was coming out. He obliged blazing the trees as he walked straight up with an axe. Of course, he expected that they (DOC) would zig-zag the track route when they (eventually) created it but all they did was nail the orange triangles to the trees – which is why this is such an awful section today!
See also:
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky-day-2/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky-3/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky-4/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky-5/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky-7/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky-8/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/insects-can-ruin-a-camping-trip/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/dusky-track-canoeing-the-seaforth/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/dusky-track-adventures-1/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/eddie-herrick-moose-hunting-at-dusky-sound/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/eddie-herrick-moose-hunting-at-dusky-sound/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/a-friend-i-met-on-the-dusky-track-fiordland-nz/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/dusky-south-coast-tracks/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/dreaming-of-the-dusky-track/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-dusky/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/moose-hunting/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/fiordland-moose/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/fiordland-moose-2/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/hunting-in-fiordland/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/off-to-fiordland/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/shadowland-fiordland-video/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-best-toilet-view-in-the-world/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/10-days-in-fiordland/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/fiordland-2009/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/fiordland-nz-with-bryn/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/fiordland-april-2007/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/weather-for-fiordland/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/more-dusky-adventures/
