Great Kepler Track

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Great Kepler Walk

After 3 days of solid walking along one of the best walking tracks in New Zealand, Helen and I came away with many blisters, rock hard leg muscles and even more wonder for this stunning country.This track is about 20 years old and was opened to relieve the pressure off the famous Milford track which everyone raves about and is booked up for months in advance. The Kepler track is an alpine track so is inevitably dryer than the Milford and it begins by following the lakeshore of Te Anau before a steady climb for a few hours towards the bushline where you can see a panoramic view of the Te Anau Basin, Takitimu Mountains and the Snowdon and Earl Mountains. It's then a short walk to Luxmore Hut where we stayed, along with around 50 others, in a bunk room. Despite the cold conditions which we are not really used to, and the inevitable noise that would come with sharing a room with 50 others, we managed to get a reasonable rest before waking up at around 7.30am the next day to watch the sunrise. The ranger at the hut told us that we were going to have one of the best days weather-wise of the season which was great news as you can get stranded at the Luxmore hut if the weather suddenly turns for the worst. After watching the sunrise we set off for another day up towards the summit of Mt Luxmore which is 1472 m high. We reached the peak and continued our climb along the top of mountain ridges and then down through rainforest until we finally, after a long walk downhill, made it to Iris Burn hut with my feet covered in blisters and Helen's bunion's hurting! It was a slightly nicer hut as we were all split into smaller rooms although not as good for the setting compared to Luxmore which was situated fairly high up and looked out over the lake and mountains. After another night of chilling out, cooking (we had to carry all our own food/pots and pans on the trek) and recovering we set off fairly early for another day's walking. The final day was very different to the previous day where we were traversing the alpine tops of the mountains as this day was fairly flat and mostly covered as we were back at ground level. It was hard work though as, towards the end, everything was killing and we were happy to sit down once again on the bus from Rainbow Reach to Te Anau. We covered around 60 kilometres in 3 days and was one of the best walks I have ever done- i would thoroughly recommend it!

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Photos

me striking a pose in the sunrise.
It was actually freezing...

Mt. Lumore Hut
The first hut we stayed in...