Kepler Track

So this past weekend Gray, Dylan, Theresa, Mackenzie, and I left Dunedin at 6 in the morning, drove to Te Anau, and set off on the Kepler Track.  Kepler is one of 6 Great Walks on the south island, and is supposed to be one of the harder tramps.  We walked a total of 50.6 km (31.4 Miles) over the next three days, and we did it in impressive time I must say.  The track is amazing, starting along the bank of Lake Te Anau, branching off into a rainforest, switchbacking up past tree line to the top of the mountain ridges.  We spent the first night in Luxmore Hut, and woke up to beautiful weather (we were anticipating nothing but rain the whole weekend; the sun was much better) and stunning views as the layers upon layers of clouds were awesome.  Click on the panorama below to view full size.

The view we woke up to

We then spent the entire second day traversing along the ridge line of mountains, looking out over Fiordland National Park.  Dylan and Mackenzie charged it, but Gray, Theresa, and I kept getting distracted by all the awesomeness around us and stopped to film and photograph everything, so we fell behind a bit.  We made it to the end of the cool stuff up on top of the mountains and had to make our way back down into the rainforest and into the valley to make camp for the night.  Gray and I got to use our new stoves which work super well and Gray taught us how to make fire-balls in our hands with a lighter.  I also learned which brand of hot chocolate NOT to buy, as it took an entire third of the package just to get the sensation of chocolate.  We were pretty tired so everyone passed out pretty quickly.

Except we didn’t because it got cold.  Super cold.  I’m pretty sure Gray was the only one who was able to fall asleep because of his fancy multi-layered sleeping bag.  We had to start hiking again at 8 in the morning, because we had 8 hours of tramping ahead of us and had to make the 5pm bus back to our car.  Theresa and Mackenzie led our hiking machine for most of the day, and because of their pace we did some serious work, hiking through more rainforest and along Lake Manapouri, making it to the end of the track at Rainbow Reach in only 6 hours, a whole hour early before the 3pm bus we were able to catch instead.  Legit.

Overall, awesome weekend with awesome people.  Theresa and I decided that life is much better on top of mountains, Dylan learned how to play hearts, Gray felt the wrath of the Queen of Spades, Mackenzie can’t light a lighter if she holds it sideways, I coined a new tramping term – The Slinky (Ask about it), Theresa became addicted to her spork, peanut butter, and honey, we all experimented a bit with macro photography, found a purple mushroom, and saw truly stunning landscapes.  I can’t wait for this Friday when we leave for mid-semester break.  On the agenda are two more Great Walks – Routeburn, a road trip up the West Coast, and then 4 days on the beautiful beaches of the Abel Tasman Track.

Check out the photos!

The view we woke up to

Hope you enjoy them!