Borland tracks: Mt Eldrig to Mt Burns and Green Lake

DAY 1: Borland Road to Mt Eldrig summit

Start of track up Borland Road


After beech forest I reach some sections of bog vegetation


Above the tree line I manage to see Lake Monowhai


Looking up towards eldrig peaks


Some interesting alpine plant


Borland Road which heads all the way out to West Arm.


Some of the many tarns up the mountain


The last bit to climb to reach Mt Eldrig summit was quite rugged


I reach Mt Eldrig at 1595m at 9pm


Looking at my climb tomorrow across the saddle to Mt Burns


There was an incredible sunset over the mountains.


Mt Titiroa in the background, the highest peak for miles around


Sunset over where I set up camp for the night.


Sunset over the Takitimu Mountain range


DAY 2: Mt Eldrig to Mt Burns, then Green Lake

I woke up at 6am to find myself above the cloud


It was a cold night sleeping out under the stars at such a high altitude but well worth it.


Morning sunrise over the mountains


I stayed above the clouds most of the day before they burnt off by the afternoon


It was a very knarly climb across the saddle


It was a slow walk to Mt Burns as I had to climb over sections of rock like this


I finally reach Mt Burns 1645m with some great views across southland


I found these green weevils at the summit of Mt Burns


A huge tarn and Lake below Mt Burns


Green Lake to the left and Island Lake on the right


Green Lake


I had a massive descent down to the Lake through mainly tussock with other random spikey/prickly plants thats scratched up my legs quite bad.


This is part of the mountain I had to walk down to get to the Lake. It was some tough off track walking with heaps of hidden streams that I kept falling into.


I had a quick swim at green lake


To get back to borland road I walked beech forest with several kilometre long tussock clearings like this one


Map of the borland tracks


4 January 2011

I wanted to get off track a bit so packed my topo map and compass and headed out to the borland tracks about 1hr from Te Anau. I followed an overgrown track through some beech forest to the treeline and then tranversed to the top of Mt Eldrig through the open tussock. After sleeping at the summit I followed the ridge to Mt Burns and then the valleys through to Green Lake. I then jumped on the track back out to borland road where I managed to hitch the 13km back to my car.

I had such an awesome couple of days in some of the most scenic terrain of Fiordland.