The Kepler Track

With the excitement of QT behind us we headed further south to the Fiordland National Park region.  Perhaps more than anything else, this is what I wanted to come to New Zealand for.  A massive 12,500km2 national park, it is one of the largest national parks in the world.  This is a new and tumultuous area geographically speaking, with the Pacific plate colliding with the Indo-Australian plate to create a huge chain of precipitous mountains stretching along the Southwest coast all the way up to Kaikoura.  Moisture clad winds blowing from the Tasman crash up against the mountains ensuring buckets of rain; it is one of the wettest places on Earth with 6,813mm per year!  This combination makes for some lush rainforest, thousands of cascading waterfalls and some epic fiords and sea cliffs.  Seeing as how only one road penetrates into its largely harsh and inaccessible wilderness, what better place could their be to do our first ever multi day backpacking trip? :)

The Kepler Track is a 60km, 4 day track crossing the Kepler mountain range that borders on the shores of Lake Te Anau.  With backpacks in tow we took to the trail which winded its way along the jurassic looking forest shoreline.  Ferns carpeted the forest floor and moss every other surface.  It wasn't long before we found ourselves at the base of the ascent and began the climb.  As the elevation rose the forest changed in subtle way.  The trees got shorter, the moss became whiter, the terrain more rocky.  We burst from the treelike just in time to prevent Kayleigh's knees from buckling under exhaustion.  The views over the lake were pretty amazing and we arrived at the Luxmore Hut (more like a chalet!) in time to catch some awesome views of the South Arm of the lake and the mountains above.  

A close up of the lichens and mosses 

Hidden lakes and Te Anau

We found out that night, much to our dismay, that the climbing wasn't over yet.  The 2nd day was to climb an additional 400m before descending equal distance only the ascend it again before a long 1200m descent.  To make it all the more fun and interesting, it snowed that night so we had about 3" of fresh powder covering the trail and ensuring everything was slick. Add to that the 60km/h gusts of wind, occasional sleet and fog and we were facing up against "blizzard like" conditions.  We hadn't really packed for that kind of cold given the time of year, but luckily we had enough layers to keep warm and dry sans the hands which were losing the battle against the icy wind.  Once they started to go numb the trail became more bearable and the pace picked up.  As we went along the high ridges sheltered us from some of the wind and the song "Winter Wonderland" looped in my mind as I enjoyed the novelty of the snow.  As the altitude raised the rugged exposed black rock was reminiscent of some scenes in LOTR.  We were even lucky enough to have the clouds part just long enough to glimpse some amazing primeval looking mountain and lake views.

Walking in a winter wonderland

But as you know, everything that goes up must come down, and down we came.  Plodding heavily under the added weight of our packs we stomped our way down the long zigzagging trail 1200 meters to the Iris Burn Valley.  Knees ached and the good spirits dwindled to somber silence as we marched.  When we finally arrived we could hardly make dinner before collapsing into our bunks.  Despite being the longest and most difficult section of the hike, it was certainly the highlight.  Even though we didn't see as much as we could have due to the weather, the snow and bad visibility gave the sense that you were much more isolated than you really were and made it feel like a real adventure.  Maybe this reveals my nerdiness, but as we walked I imagined we were walking through some remote location in the Himalayas.  Good stuff.

The 3rd day was mostly flat along the Iris Burn River Valley providing some nice views of the high mountains and some more jurassic looking forest, but the real highlight of day 3 was Lake Manapouri.  Even better, the last hut of the trip was located right on its shores.  It proved a beautiful bath tub to rinse off 3 days of hiking.  A hike back to the carpark was all it took to complete the circuit on the 4th day, completing our very first backpacking trip.

Iris Burn Valley 

Plum tuckered

Lake Manapouri