© NZPocketGuide.com
© NZPocketGuide.com

The Chasm Walk in Milford Sound – Day 149

© NZPocketGuide.com

Day 149 on the Road

The Chasm in Milford Sound

Today we are doing one of the free walks in Milford Sound, The Chasm! If you liked this video and want to see more, join our backpacker squad over on YouTube!

Today we’re gonna check out the Chasm. I am going to try to go through this travel diary from behind a wall of thousand sandflies.

This morning we are waking up in the beautiful surroundings of the Milford Sound Lodge and we are up early this morning to get to work on NZPocketGuide.com until we hear a weird scratching on the roof of our campervan. Outside there is a kea which is native parrot here in New Zealand They are really cheeky they are trying to pull apart our campervan but they are super super entertaining to watch.

Then it’s back to work on NZPocketGuide.com before hitting the road for today’s activity. We are gonna be doing the Chasm walk today which is a 20 minutes loop walk and it’s located just between Milford Sound and the Homer Tunnel super easy access. It’s a great introduction to the native forest of the Fiordland National Park.

Alright so we are at the Chasm or Chasm or nobody knows how to pronounce it. It’s a lovely little walk to do in Milford Sound if you don’t want to spend too much money and want to embrace the rainforest. Look how thick the rainforest is around us. It’s pretty amazing.

You can barely see the sky. And we are only 5 minutes in. It’s crazy beautiful.

A quarter of New Zealand is covered still in it’s native forest and most of that forest can be found right here in the Fiordland National Park.

Although this is a really short walk there is really heaps to see along the way. First up there are heaps of information boards all along the way that tells us more about the native forest, the wildlife that we can see here including the kea that we saw this morning on top of our campervan as well as all the different plant species that we can see around. Most of the native Fiordland forest is actually beech forest which give birth to the wealth of many different other plant species which makes this entire forest look really thick and luxuriant.

After about 10 minute walk we can start hearing the thunderous roar of the Chasm this must mean that we’re getting really close to it.

A Chasm is basically a lovely little stream, it’s a very fancy word to say that this very powerful force of water has carved it’s way through the forest and has made some really awesome rock formations along the way.

Below the bridge we can see all these potholes which have been formed by the chasm. it’s this really deep canyon with epic waterfalls making their way through and then you can see there’s rocks which has moss and different vegetation trying to hold on and trying to hold grow again but the water is just too powerful. We can even see tree trunk that have been wedged between to the chasm as well. It’s really epic to see.

All these round rock formations have been caused by hard rock that’s been washed down by the mountains and flood water int he Cleddau River. Hard rock has swirled in the lower land soft rock and dug holes and created this huge chasm or at least that’s what the information sign says at the end of the bridge.

this walk is a really great pit stop on your way down to Milford Sound.the drive as you saw a few days ago is very long and extremely torturous so it’s really cool to have some awesome places like this to stop at when making your way down to the jewel of the South Island.

In fact, I am pretty sure that every single bus makes it way down to Milford Sound stops at the Chasm. We’ve seen heaps of bus tours passing along the way while we were taking the time to photograph and film all of its little nooks and cracks.

Out of the 15 Pitstops on the Road to Milford Sound which we actually list in an article on NZPocketGuide.com, which we will link up in the description below, this has to be one of my favourite stops. Just the amazing sight of this water just splitting the rainforest in half is so impressive to see. And it’s actually quite hard to show the size of the Chasm with just filming and photos.

On top of the awesome scenery we are blessed with amazing weather today. it has been raining a lot during our stay in Milford Sound and you can definitely check that out in our previous videos but today there is no cloud in sight we have a an amazing weather and it gives us plenty of time to explore the area and all that it has to offer without being scared of being rained on at any time.

After spending a good hour taking a million pictures of the chasm we are now moving onto the rest of the walk. As mentioned it’s a really short 20 minutes walk so the rest of the loop is about all the same , it’s beautiful native rainforest we get a glimpse of the waterfalls and the little stream as well it’s an amazing and lush area that is an awesome walk.

This has to be one of the best examples of Fiordland rainforest so if you’re not into long strenuous hikes and still want to experience the Fiordland rainforest this has to be one of our top picks.

The forest is home to many different rare New Zealand bird species like the takahe which we actually saw in the Te Anau Bird Sanctuary the other day and also the kakapo which is the world’s only flightless parrot.

But there is so much more to do in Milford Sound and we’re gonna be showing you a lot more free walks and free short walks in tomorrow’s video so make sure you check that one out as well.

But for now we’re heading back toward our campervan and back down the Milford Road just a short drive to the Milford Lodge.

Oh my God there’s so many sandflies on the camera. We are coming to you live from sandfly central.

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