e. Kepler Track (12 – 13/09/08)

During the Off Peak/Winter Season, no booking for the use of huts along the track is required. But trackers must buy hut tickets before starting. As we planned to stay for a night in Luxmore Hut, we had to pay NS$15 each.

No facilities at the huts were available except pit toilets and individual bunks with mattresses. So we had to carry all necessary cooking utensils, sleeping bags etc. The morning before we left our motel, we prepared sandwiches for three meals - two lunches and one breakfast. We were prepared to cook dried noodles for our dinner.

At the office of the DOC, we were told that the track to Luxmore Hut would take between 2.5 to 5 hours, depending on our fitness.

We drove to the Control Gate to start our trek. The first part of the track from the Control Gate to Brod Bay, a distance of 5.6km, is quite gentle. It follows the shore of Lake Te Anau through red beech forests covered with mosses and ferns. We took just over an hour to reach Brod Bay where we stopped for a drink.

The track from Brod Bay to Luxmore Hut covers a distance of 8.2km. It climbs steadily to the limestone buffs where we stopped to take our sandwiches for lunch. At was cloudy when we started our trek, but it started to drizzle before we reached the limestone buffs which provided some shelter for our lunch break

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We continued our climb after half an hour of lunch break and unfortunately the drizzle turned to rain when we reached the bushline.

Before we reached Luxmore Hut, the rain stopped, but we were soaking wet, not because of the rain but because we sweated profusely under the cover of the raincoat! We took about five hours, including drink stops and lunch break, to hike from the Control Gate to Luxmore Hut (altitude 1,085m). We were neither slow nor fast in our hike, but to do it in 2.5 hours one had to jog all the way with no heavy back-pack. We saw a couple of joggers passing us on the way to the Hut.

Besides the four of us, there were only six other hikers who arrived before us. The Hut can accommodate a maximum of50 hikers during peak season. It has a kitchen but without running water and gas stoves and beside it there is a sizable lounge cum dining room.

By about 6.00pm, it was getting dark and cold. We began to prepare our dinner of noodles by first setting up two small gas stoves, one from Kenny and the other from Larry. Water had to be fetched from a pit just outside the hut.

We retired early and were up and about early the next morning. We prepared our hot drinks and ate our packed sandwiches for breakfast. After breakfast, we packed, including all our rubbish and were ready to descend to the Control Gate by 8.30am. The weather was fine and the scenery from the Hut to the bushline was breathtaking.

We arrived at The Control Gate before 2.00pm and headed straight to Te Anau for our lunch though we still had our prepared lunch-sandwiches in our back-packs! At the restaurant we were reunited with the girls. We left Te Anau for Invercargill after lunch.

The walking track from the Control Gate to Luxmore Hut is constructed to a very high standard. Most streams are bridged, boardwalks cover boggy areas and the very steep sections areas have steps.

The track passes through some of the spectacular scenery and traverses through landscapes of the Fiordland National Park ranging from rocky mountain ridges to tall mossy forests from lake shores to deep gorges.

A race, called the Kepler Challenge, traverses the whole track of 60km in about 5 hours is conducted annually.

The successful completion of this hike demonstrates that the pampered greenhorns like us (except Larry) are able to hike without guides and porters!

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