Epic Hikes of the World ( PDFDrive )

© Philip Lee Harvey | Lonely Planet
Lake Mackenzie
“A sheer drop of hundreds, then thousands of feet grows with each new
switchback”
The next morning I pick up the track with a steep climb up a narrow, zig-zagging
path. Alongside, a sheer drop of hundreds, then thousands of feet grows with each
new switchback, until I reach a rocky open area overlooking the Hollyford Valley.
The near-perpendicular granite slopes of the Darran Mountains line up before me.
Sir Edmund Hillary cut his teeth here before making his attempt on Everest in 1953.
For early European settlers, these westernmost reaches were a dark, forbidding
place, unmapped and unknown. Today, as I walk up to the grassy hilltop of Harris
Saddle, I look out into the rumpled green distance, and it’s clear that great areas
of dense forest and scrubland remain as they were hundreds of years ago, still
rarely, if ever, visited by humans.