NZ Day 3 - Kepler Day 1

Thursday, 15 December 2022

Happily for all of us, Jett woke up feeling a lot better and we confirmed his lack of covid with a RAT test we had him take at the start of the track - around 2 hours drive from Queenstown.

The Kepler track can be done in 2 or 3 or 4 days (or even 1, if you do the 60km Kepler Challenge run - the record is 4hrs 38). We wanted to do it in 3 days and 2 nights, so we parked our car and caught the track bus to the other start of the track, about 10k down the road - thus making our final day of hiking a hefty 23km rather than a draining 33km.  The weather was beautiful and we struck out for a very easy 5km hike alongside Lake Te Anau. The track was smooth and delightful and we reached Brod Bay after an hour or so. 

From there things got a bit more serious as the track turned uphill for the next 8k. We climbed about 750 metres zigzagging up through beautiful green mossy & ferny forest and around limestone cliffs. It was hot and sweaty work.

Slow and steady we rose and rose, taking in the views back across the lake as we went:

Until eventually we made it to the abrupt end of the tree-line:

On our way up we had noticed that there were a lot of people coming down with very small daypacks. This was curious but we soon realised that it was a common day walk to take the ferry across to Brod Bay and walk up and back down simply for the views.  What was even more curious were the people walking down with no packs at all, who also looked like they had never hiked a step in their lives and who certainly weren't really dressed for the outdoors - it turns out that there's a heli-hike tour - where for $625 a helicopter drops you at Luxmore Hut and you walk back down to Brod Bay - sounds like a good option to me!

After the treeline ended we had about half an hour of very scenic hiking to get to Luxmore hut - where our only remaining important task for the day was to select bunks for the night. 

It was still only around 3pm so we had plenty of time in the afternoon to explore the local cave and lounge around in the funny curly wurly tussock grass in the sun.

Eventually it was legitimately dinner time - NZ Great Walk huts provide the gas and nice kitchens with sinks to cook in. The view from this kitchen was particularly spectacular:

After a not very exciting dinner we were tucked up in our bunk by 9pm.