We made it back to Queenstown! In the last few days since the last post we drove down to Te Anau, in the Fiordlands, and hiked the Kepler Loop. This is one of the “Great Walks” for which New Zealand is famous, and one of the few that can be completed as a loop, without taking a shuttle from end to end.
The Kepler Track starts at Lake Te Anau, which is the largest lake on the South Island--the longer arm of the lake is 65 km long! After about an hour’s easy tramping through rainforest with five- and ten-foot tall ferns, we reached the first campsite on the track. When we checked with the local DOC (Department of Conservation) office we had been told that the loop was closed at the top due to avalanche danger, so we planned an out-and-back along a portion of the track, with our first night at the hut at the top of the mountain and our second night at the campsite in the rain forest. We checked out the campsite, agreed that it would be a nice place to stay with a lazy hour’s walk out on the last day, and carried on up the mountain.
The second part of the day’s hike was a posted four-hour climb to the Luxmore Hut, which sits above the tree line—and sometimes above the clouds. We climbed steadily out of the rainforest and through drier, hardier trees, with drifts of lichen instead of the moss that was so ubiquitous at lower elavations. After about an hour and a half we suddenly stepped out of the trees and onto the tussock above the brush line. From there it was an easy walk through light drizzle to the “hut,” which turned out to be much closer to a ski lodge than to the six-bunk hut we enjoyed above Lake Ohau. Luxmore Hut has about sixty bunks, solar-powered lights, propane stoves, and flush toilets—luxurious indeed for a hut at 1085 meters, where everything is flown in by helicopter.
We checked our clocks and found that the planned strenuous day had taken us a grand total of four hours. The clouds were so thick both above and below us that we couldn’t see the fjords below us or the mountains avove us, so we decided to go underground and check out the nearby Luxmore Caves. This turned out to be a brilliant idea: the caves were occupied by other trampers at the very entrance, but once we descended into the tighter parts of the caves there were no other people to be seen. Wesley and Forest set off ahead at a brisk pace, and Nathan Golshan and I hung back to take pictures and look around at the limestone formations around us. When we had gazed our fill we followed the others down through the caves, which quickly narrowed to a single, steeply descending passage with gaps so small we wondered how the long-legged Forest and Wesley had fit through them.
After a while we began to wonder how far ahead of us the others had gone. Nathan and I agreed the Forest would continue until he could go no further—and might have to be hauled out by his soaked sneakers—so when we saw his jacket on a rock by a side passage we knew we had probably reached the bottom of the caves. We continued down to find the end, and found a delicate passage so narrow that even I almost got stuck. We were so deep that we had long since ceased to see limestone formations or signs of other people’s presence. Then we turned around and scrambled out of the cave and returned to the warm, dry hut to dry out and talk to other trampers.
The next day we saw blue skies and fjords far below us when we rolled out of our bunks, and the ranger informed us that the pass would be open and we could go through to the next hut instead of returning the way we came. We gladly set out for a day above the treeline, with views out over the lake and down the fjords. We also discovered the the DOC's definition of "avalanche" is somewhat misleading: the patch of snow they were worried about was just a very short segment that could slip late on a sunny day. It was an easy trot across, and we continued on our merry way. At the end of the day we dropped all of our elevation again, coming to rest at the Iris Burn Hut and campsite. As campers we were not allowed in the hut, so we had a quiet dinner and retired early, pursued by our new enemies: sandflies.
At this point I'd like to comment on New Zealand wildlife. There is actually nothing poisonous in this country. The spiders don't bite and the most annoying insect (the sandfly again) goes to bed at about 9:00 pm and stops bothering trampers. This is completely different from Australia, where most things that could bite you would be painful at the last, and life-threatening at the worst.
Not only do the animals here not know how to be poisonous, they also don't know how to defend themselves. There are multiple species of flightless birds, and the only native mammals are two species of bats. Imported mammals are unfortunately decimating the local birds, which tend to lay eggs in exposed places and cannot even fly away when cornered. Kiwi look adorable, but also rather silly.
Back to the track: after our night at Iris Burn we woke up and commenced the 30 km tramp out. We hiked nonstop for most of the day, because every time we stopped the sandflies started biting. We passed through more variations on forest, and stopped for a snack on the Rainbow Reach Swingbridge. We were very happy to reach our car and set up camp at the end of the day, even though the clouds had rolled back in and it was drizzling lightly when we set up camp.
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