After a brilliantly starry night, we woke to a stunning day so quickly set off again for our eighth consecutive day of walking. This time we were going to Key Summit on the Routeburn Track which Isabel and I had been to before but which Alison and Joy hadn’t seen. Last time we were there it was raining and windy and the area had seemed quite eery. This time we would have a very different view.

The walk in from The Divide wound steadily uphill for over an hour and the views became increasingly impressive. From Key Summit you can see the mountains of the Humboldt and the Darran Ranges and the three river valleys – the Greenstone, the Hollyford and the Eglinton. After we turned off the main track, the vegetation became much more interesting with lots of berries, some deep pink with white centres, mountain daisies, horrid Spaniards, Haast carrots and gentians. On the summit were bog pines, cushion plants, sundews and mossy, stunted beech trees, some hundreds of years old but still very small because of the harsh conditions in which they live.

We left the circle track to walk up along the ridge and the area was like an enchanted forest with strangely shaped trees and plants. The mosses on the trees were the strange golden brown colour peculiar to that environment and clung round the branches in big fuzzy clumps like leg warmers.

As the mist lifted, the views of the mountains became better and better with Mt Christina emerging from the clouds to show its snowy jagged peak. We could also see Lake Marian in its hanging valley and down the Hollyford Valley towards the camp, Although it was a beautiful day, it was very cold at the top so we didn’t linger long over lunch before starting our descent to the car park. It is easy to underestimate this environment, a point which was emphasised by the disappearance of an Israeli tramper on the Routeburn Track at around the same time. Sadly, she was found dead some weeks later, having lost her way.