The Kepler Track

Happy Easter everyone,

Hope everybody had a good time over the holidays. Both Drea's and my work were nice enough to give us not only Friday and Monday off for Easter but, as an added bonus, Tuesday after Easter as well to celebrate our yearly regional holiday, Otago Day. So we got to spend a wonderful 5 day weekend over in Fiordland tramping on the kepler track and doing a bit of relaxing.

We did some searching beforehand for a place to stay Te Anau so that we could get an early start to our hike on Friday without having to sleep in the car. And we got soooooo lucky!!! We found a spectacular little backpackers that was our own private cottage with a veranda overlooking Lake Manapouri. We will definitely go back to this place next time we're in the area. Freestone BBH. Here's a picture of our veranda...

Getting up relatively early, we got a tip from our host that we should get a move on because a storm front was supposed to come in that afternoon. Thanks Jimmy, very good tip! We hit the trail and started our way up the mountain. And up up up we went. The first day of this track was about 4 hours of nothing but up through some beautiful forest and along some spectacular limestone cliffs. But the slope was pretty consistent and wasn't switchback after switchback so when we reached the top we still felt pretty good.

This is our track profile, we went from left to right.

At the top we dropped our packs, grabbed our bunks and then headed out to explore the luxmore caves which were a 10 minute walk from the hut. (Side note: I can't say enough about new zealand's hut system. It's like luxury backpacking, which I'm sure some of you will say is cheating. I'm ok with it.) The caves followed an underground river down through the mountain. The walls were chalky white and covered in stalagmites, stalactites and beautiful waving curtains of limestone. We were told that you could lose almost 800 meters in elevation following the river down. We never heard from anyone if there was an outlet. Drea and I went down till we got a bit scared, went a ways further and then turned back when we decided we didn't want to crawl 40 meters to get to the next area where we could stand up. It was amazing turning out our flashlights (sorry, torches) and just feeling the closeness of the air, the gentle rumblings of the river and absolute blackness. Just remember, all you fellow spelunkers, that closeness of the air and absloute darkness is best experienced when your partner is not feeling a bit gassy. We left the caves and got back to the hut the very moment the skies opened up and started pouring down rain. Sweet

Part of the cave where it got a bit tight.

Day two was up and down for the first couple hours hiking along the ridge of the mountains. We started out fairly early and then decided to slow down to let the fog lift off the surrounding hillsides. We wanted to go up to the summit of Mt. Luxmore to get a 360 degree view of the area but it took a bit of time before the summit was fully clear.

We're here, It's clearing, we don't want anymore bears! (Andrea's clever adaptation of a simpsons reference for those who are confused)

The rest of the hike from there was glorious. Lots of up and down but the views were beautiful, the temperature was mild and the wind was light. Here's some pics of our day two...

That's Lake Te Anau in the background.

The Iris Burn valley

It's all downhill from here!!

At the end of the second day we climbed down from the ridge tops through a series of switchbacks (the ranger said there were 97 but I only counted 82). Regardless, I was a bit concerned that my knees would take a beating going through so much downhill. Luckily our friend Volker gifted us his trekking poles. They made a tremendous difference for me. Thanks Volker!!! We reached the bottom of the track, unloaded our packs and headed to the nearby stream to soak our tired feet. Drea's earned massive girlfriend points here by surprising me with a little gift that she'd hiked in for me. See below...

The last day was a nice mellow hike along the river through dense bush with occasional views of the river and surrounding mountain tops. Our last hut was along the edge of Lake Manapouri. We had a beautiful sunset, a very cold but gratifying swim in the lake (by swim I mean up to Drea's neck and up to Dave's belly button) and unfortunately an attack of sandflies. The sandflies mostly left Dave alone but Drea got assaulted. And we have since learned that Andrea is allergic to Sandfly bites. Luckily she works at a hospital. They put here on an anti-histamine and that has helped tremendously.