With Comforts, Without Pack

Opened in 1992, the 71km Queen Charlotte Track is located between Queen Charlotte and Kenepuru Sound, and Los Angles Times’s reporter Amanda Jones ó who considers herself “an outdoorswoman” but for who the “appeal of pitching a tent has lost its lustre” ó opts for a guided five-day excursion from sound to sound arranging for her baggage to be “whisked ahead by boat.” “Ray Waters would be our guide. Seventy-one years old, he and his leather-tan and sinewy legs smacked of the ¸über-athlete. Indeed, he told us, 10 years before he had run the entire track in less than 10 hours … By 6 at night we tumbled off the track onto the trimmed lawn of Furneaux Lodge, originally an early-1900s holiday home for well-heeled pioneers. Nowadays, hikers sprawl on the vast porch paying homage to their first Steinlager of the evening.”