The Divide car park is the starting point not just for the Key Summit walk, but also for three of Fiordland’s Great Walks—the Routeburn, Greenstone and Caples Walks all begin here and branch off to your right along the valleys of the same name.

If you fancy a quick taster, Key Summit track follows the Routeburn Track for about an hour before peeling off for the 30-minute climb. In the last ice age Key Summit was buried under 500 metres of ice, but now it towers 500 metres above the valley floor.

The first Europeans to climb it were two local farmers, David McKellar and George Gunn of Lake Gunn fame, in 1861. In doing so they were also the first to see the Hollyford Valley, which led to an era of history that we'll cover shortly.We definitely recommend the climb on a clear day because you’ll feel like you’re on top of the world. You’ll discover alpine meadows, squelchy bogs and crystal clear tarns, all without having to trek for days on end—so it’s a good opportunity to cheat, and soak up some stunning alpine scenery in a fraction of the time! Make sure you dress warmly though, it can get a bit nippy up there!

The car park is also the starting point for three long-distance walks, which are just as rewarding as the Milford Track. In fact, there are plenty of dedicated trampers who’ll swear that the tracks up here are even better than the Milford!
The Greenstone runs north, the Routeburn heads south, and the Caples Track leaves the Greenstone and goes around the other side of the mountains before rejoining it at the far end, on Lake Wakatipu, which is the longest lake in New Zealand—and the one on which Queenstown sits. If you are interested in tackling any of these longer walks independently, you need to book with the DoC, because like the Milford Track they take several days, and have overnight accommodation in huts. You can also join a guided walk along the Routeburn.

The Routeburn Track opened in the 1880s. It takes three days and offers magical panoramas across glaciers, frosted peaks and the tranquil mountain lakes. On day two you also get a good view of the Fiordland’s highest mountain, the mighty Mount Tutoko, as well as incredible views across the mountains and even out to the sea! The track heads north and then east right up into the Serpentine Mountains, eventually descending to meet the tarmac, where you can hop on a bus into Glenorchy or all the way to Queenstown.

The Greenstone Track heads south after striking out on the same route as the Routeburn around the base of Key Summit. It runs at a lower altitude, following the Greenstone River all the way to Lake Wakatipu, so there are not so many steep bits, and plenty of fast-flowing water and forest. The flatter terrain means you can do it in two days.
The Caples Track also takes about two days. It leaves the Greenstone Valley, then cuts across to the Caples River and then follows that down to where it joins with the Greenstone River near its mouth. Both the Greenstone and Caples Tracks are good if you’d prefer a less demanding trek.

Hollyford Track and Jamestown

Just past the Divide, on the decent into the Hollyford Valley, there is another road turning off to the right. This leads to the start of the Hollyford Track, which at 56 kilometres is even longer than the Milford Track. It takes four or five days to do and is open all year round because it doesn’t pass through any snow fields. Once you get to the other end you can either fly out, retrace your steps, or book a seat on a jet boat and zoom back along the river!

This is perhaps the most diverse of all Fiordland’s great walks, with scenery ranging from lofty glaciers through lowland swamp, barren rock fields, forested lakes and coastal sand dunes. It runs all the way along the Hollyford Valley to the surf-pounded sands of Martins Bay. Martins Bay is a little way north of Milford Sound, and had a brief flirtation with fame in the 19th century when big plans were made for it.

Martins Bay was well known to the Maori, who had a settlement there from about 1650 to the 1800s, so they could take advantage of the seafood, forest and lake foods, the greenstone, and the big trees that were ideal for canoe building.

But the Europeans didn’t know about the vast, green Hollyford Valley, or about Martins Bay, until that day in 1861 when those two farmers, McKellar and Gunn, saw it from the top of Key Summit. For some reason, the coastal surveyor Captain Stokes, who had charted the coast aboard the Acheron in 1851, had missed Martins Bay so it was left for the landlubbers to discover it years later.

Although George Gunn and David McKellar glimpsed the sparkling ocean at the far end of the green Hollyford valley from the top of Key Summit, the first recorded visit to the golden beaches of Martins Bay was paid by a man called Patrick Caples two years later. He was walking from Otago in search of gold and was the first person to cross the Otago Peninsula from coast to coast. He followed the Hollyford River through Lake McKerrow, which he named, and out to the coast. When he reached Martins Bay he came across the Maori settlement there and got spooked in case they were hostile, so he didn’t stick around very long.

But the stories that Caples told when he got back were enough to inspire local whaler Captain Alabaster and two of his mates to check out the gold-mining prospects soon after. When they got to Martins Bay they met an old Maori chief called Tutoko living there and didn’t find him to be unfriendly at all. In fact, Tutoko let them borrow his precious canoe, as they paddled up the river to explore Lake McKerrow! They thanked him by bestowing his name on the formidable Mount Tutoko, nearly three kilometers high.

A few weeks after the trio returned to civilization, geologist Dr James Hector headed to Martins Bay too, naming two coastal mountains after Captain Alabaster’s two daughters, Sara and May. Hector went on to break through to Queenstown from the coast, and proposed building a road from Queenstown to the Bay, and developing a port there. This was a very attractive idea, because a coast link to Queenstown and shorter sailing route to Australia would improve the area’s gold trade enormously. Fiordland was in the grip of its gold rush, but getting the goodies out of the remote area was problematic so an efficient trade route would have been quite handy. But so far, the walking track remains the only land route to Martin’s Bay.

But the idea of building a port did get off the ground, and the handfuls of gold that people kept returning from the Bay with, ignited a small gold rush to the area. The superintendent of Otago, James Macandrew was an ardent advocate of developing the area, and the proposed settlement was named Jamestown in his honour. Work commenced on the banks of Lake McKerrow, a little way up-river from Martins Bay.

The pioneering settlers arrived in 1870, although the first three or four boats that tried to enter the river from the bay all ran aground and the families on board lost most of their possessions. Still, people are nothing around here if not resilient, and they persevered. Jamestown grew into a settlement of about eight houses, plus a store and a pub, but it was an uphill struggle for the settlers. For starters, the road to Queenstown did not appear to be happening, even when the idea was downgraded to a bridleway. And the so-called port wasn’t exactly bustling either. Every three months, a supply ship might chug past to service the town, but its delivery was often dumped on the beach because the boats couldn’t always get up the river. Sometimes it didn’t turn up at all, which made life in Jamestown pretty hard.

Within only a few years, most of the citizens of Jamestown had given up and moved on. Nowadays the town has been almost entirely reclaimed by the forest, with only a few apple trees and stone chimneys remaining. A couple of families stayed on and stuck it out though, including the Mackenzies, who continued to keep cattle there until 1926. They sold up to legendary local Davy Gunn, no relation to George, who drove his cattle over 250 kilometres of rugged terrain every year for 29 years. Always ready to welcome tourists, Davy was sadly the last resident of Jamestown. After he drowned in the river in 1955, his homestead lay empty and abandoned.