Eldrig peak - New Zealand

Eldrig Peak

Eldrig peak is a track located in the Fiordland region of New Zealand.
It is a very steep and special track. The track climbs up from the road to the ridge line.
We started the day at 8am next to the trail head, we started with a steep walk up a winding 4x4 road that climbs up the mountain for about 4km, this part of the walk was pretty simple but with cool views of the forest around you, some birds also came to say hello and flew beside us for a while.

When we got to the road's end we had to look around for the place the track goes into the forest, it was a little tricky to find because the track goes up a steep goat path that is hard to find, the track is marked but sometimes it's a little difficult to find the markers.
After climbing into the forest we walked through Manuka shrubs and into a beautiful thick fern forest, it felt like going back in time to New Zealand before human settlement.
We walked beside a stream and kept climbing up, the path walks through the trees and sometimes it's hard to find it, it is also steeper than before.
We kept climbing as the vegetation around us slowly became smaller and more fit to alpine terrain, at some point we started climbing up rocks and boulders until we reached the forest clearing, from this point forward we were in complete alpine vegetation.
Most of the scenery from here was alpine shrub, rocks and the beautiful Fiordland mountains.
At some point my girlfriend got tired and didn't want to climb anymore, we had a small break and I took her bag so we could keep going.
We crossed a stream and had to walk through bog and here we saw the steepest climb of the track going up to Eldrig peak and onto the ridge line.

We kept climbing up and up, then we got tired and checked where we were on the map, to our surprise we passed Eldrig peak and started walking the ridge line, that has higher and higher points on it, we decided to stop, have lunch and climb back down.
You could potentially keep going on the ridge but that means you have to take a tent and more supplies with you.
The views from the top are breathtaking even when the day is cloudy like we had.

When we started climbing down and got to the forest we were going pretty fast and lost the path at some point, we got scared and worried, in the native forests of New Zealand everywhere you look seems the same and you get disoriented quickly, we stopped took a breath and walked to the last place we knew where we were, we took our time and found the markings back to the 4x4 road.
It was a super cool hike up in the mountains leaving us with a taste for more.