I had never heard of the Moonlight Track until I’d found it on a walking map of Queenstown, trying to find tracks that could be reached by public transport. In this case a 10 minute bus ride (at 7.35am) took me to Arthur’s Point, suburb of Queenstown, with a 20 minute dawn walk to the start of the atmospherically named Moonlight Track.
A very cold start to the day, but I was rewarded with the sun rising over the snow capped mountains.
All was going fine until an hour in I came across a herd of about 30 cows and their calves, who were rather nervous, and therefore potentially quite dangerous. You certainly wouldn’t want to get in the way of a running cow, which wasn’t uncommon this morning, not ideal when by yourself on a relatively narrow track.
They headed off along the track so I followed them, keeping a safe distance, plenty of angry mooing going on. Reached a standoff after 20 minutes so I headed up the hillside to try and outflank them, but failed when I came across a ridge line of rough rocks and they’d already gone ahead of me on the track.
Finally after 45 minutes came across a fence I could climb over for some safety, and had a final spectacular frosty view of the valleys, and the herd below, before starting the Ben Lomond Track, subject of my next post.
3 thoughts on “Moonlight Track and outflanking cows”