The Kepler Track – Part Two

Welcome, welcome ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, to the second and final part of my five-day romance with the city of Te Anau and the Kepler Track, one of New Zealand’s nine Great Walks (not five, as reported earlier, sorry). If you’d like, please scroll down to read about the first part of my journey, though this is by no means necessary to enjoy Part Two.

(For trivia buffs, the others are the Routeburn Track; the Milford Track, which is, of course, by the world-famous Milford Sound; the Abel Tasman Coastal Track; the Rakiura Track; the Heaphy Track; the Waikaremoana Track; the Tongariro Northern Circuit; and the Whanganui River Journey—see New Zealand’s Department of Conservation website [www.doc.govt.nz] for more info on these and other hikes.)

We find our heroes awaking early, preparing for a steep uphill climb. We were around 500 meters up at Iris Burn Hut, and the trail would take us up around 1500 meters before settling down to Luxmore Hut, just over a thousand meters above sea level. The day started like the previous two, in the forest. The climb was steep from the get-go, and any hopes of levelling off were dashed as the trail wound its path up the mountain, growing steeper with every curve. I turned to music for strength, via my iPod Shuffle. It helped a bit, but if I have to give one piece of advice for steep climbs, it’s this: Don’t look up. Looking up while walking uphill and seeing only more uphill is very depressing if you’re already exhausted. Rather, the ground just in front of you, and work towards that, and then the ground just beyond that. The morning was not all despair, though, as our environment encouraged us with better and better views of our surroundings:




The forest seemed to age around us, the plentiful moss-covered beech trees giving way to hardier types, now covered in lichen. After an eternity, we very suddenly popped out above the bush line. Rejuvenated, we scrambled to the top of the ridge, and took in the panorama.







We had been warned of an “easy” uphill climb followed by a “hard” uphill climb. Climbing up, we thought that the easy part had shifted to the hard part, and we were now prepared for the gentle up-and-down of the ridge.

We were so wrong.



This picture is taken from a reasonably level angle, and yes, those are stairs winding away in the distance. Without handrails. On top of a freaking mountain. Looking up, I wondered if Kez had ever dealt with something like this in her training.

I climbed every one of those accursed stairs, and as clumsy as I am, I nearly tumbled to my doom on several occasions. My joy was boundless, though, and I scooped up a few handfuls of snow and threw them at Geri to prove it. Hey, when you’re from Texas, you’ll take snow whenever you can get it.

At long last, we arrived at Hanging Valley Shelter, which is just a small enclosed, well, shelter for hikers if the weather gets too extreme. We decided to have lunch just here, but there was one other guest.



The notoriously smart, notoriously notorious Kea bird, a kind of parrot, I believe. Intelligent and unafraid. Actually, under the wings of it’s gray-brown exterior are some vivid oranges, reds, and even blues. This one wanted our lunch, and though we gave him a bit of apple, he (she?) wanted more, and devised many schemes to get it, the most crafty of which was hopping under the table and snatching at food held in our careless hands. Christa and the kea had a face-off, neither backing down from a death stare that would have sent me home for a teddy bear and a hug. Eventually the kea retreated, though protesting loudly, and we enjoyed the sunshine on our faces. Christa then made a quick toilet stop, and as I looked over at the facility, my jaw dropped. That girl had nerves of galvanized steel.



The Toilet to Nowhere. It’s actually dangling over the edge of the ridge, and though it’s supported by those cables, I would definitely think twice about whether I really had to go before entering.

Soon, though, we moved on, and the going became slow, as first one side, then the other, then both dropped away from the trail as it curved uphill, now downhill, now around the side of this mountain, overlooking that lake. We soon glimpsed a fjord:



Though the scenery was unbelievably beautiful and changed with every curve of the track, the hard going took its toll on us by the time we reached the next shelter two hours later. This time four keas laid claim to it and its toilet, and they left quite a mess. They circled around us, cawing loudly. As we snacked on some cookies, they grew louder and louder, until I lost my temper and started arguing with them. They cawed back in deafening unison, and I gave up, defeated. Stupid green birds. We hiked on and on, and came to a side track leading to Mount Luxmore. This trail was less than a foot wide, and fiendishly difficult to follow, disappearing completely at times, leaving Christa, Geri, and me scrabbling up the mountain face. Eventually, we reached the top, 1471 meters up (around 5000 feet)



We lingered for a while, and then the call of a nearby kea drew us back to our packs, worried that the kea might have ripped a hole in them, or worse, tried to mark some new territory. As sunrays roved over the countryside like so many searchlights, the track sloped downwards to Luxmore Hut, and we reached it after eight exhausting hours on the trail.


A hut isn’t as small as the name connotes. Each one contains dozens of bunks and is about the size of a ranch house. Luxmore was by far the largest hut, and even had lights, which dazzled our eyes after days of candlelight and gas stoves. It was an early evening, as the hut was crowded, large groups of people jostling one another for space. We felt somehow removed from this group; we had come so far already, and these people were only beginning. They had not faced the perils we had, had not triumphed in the joys at Moturau, nor jumped in an ice-cold river at Iris Burn or reveled in every morsel of chocolate eaten during the breaks. We went to bed early that night, though I lay awake for a while, contemplating all that we had seen.

The final morning woke me just before seven, and I lolled in a half-stupor until Geri’s phone alarm went off, waking everyone in the bunkroom except Christa, who was coming down with a cold. Thinking that I should put on some water for everyone’s tea and coffee, I walked out towards the deck, yawning and stretching. There I found a most unexpected surprise.



Dawn approached. Now wide awake, I stumbled back into the bunkroom (I told you I was clumsy), and woke Geri, despite his request of three more minutes. “Sunrise,” I blurted, and he was up and out of bed like a shot. We watched the sky growing steadily more orange, tinting the low-lying clouds, and Geri suggested that we go down the path a ways, so we could see around the bit of mountain obstructing our view. Geri and I grabbed our shoes, and sprinted down the boardwalk as fast as we could go, uncaring that one slip would send us tumbling thousands of feet below. We stood in the thigh-high grass around the bit of mountain, and looked unblinkingly toward the horizon. One other hiker followed us after a few moments, and the three of us welcomed the first rays of the sun into the world.



After that, the day was a breeze. The path was entirely downhill, and we walked down through the bush line, through the clouds. The views were still excellent, though after Day 3 and that morning’s sunrise, it was tough to find a place on our camera’s memory cards. We strolled into the city of Te Anau a little after one in the afternoon, where we met Jamie, the Canadian guy from the first day, and gave him a ride to Dunedin, where he is currently enjoying his next adventure.

As we headed home, words and phrases like “incredible,” “wonderful,” and “Earth’s magnum opus” chased each other around my mind. Of course, that’s a far-fetched claim to make, only having been to two countries in my life, but the feeling lingered. Geri, Christa, and Jamie chatted of other countries, other times, but for me, I cranked up the volume on my iPod Shuffle, and concurred with U2: It was a beautiful day.

These are only a few of the pictures I took during my five-day journey. I have put up 130 pictures--including the ones you’ve seen--here if you’d like to see other pictures, learn more about the trip, or just see the pics shown here in higher resolution. The ones here are some of the best, but they’re only some.