South Island adventuring, part three
The next leg of our holiday was another tramp: the Kepler Track. One of New Zealand’s Great Walks, the Kepler was created to relieve crowding on the nearby Milford and Routeburn tracks. Apparently it didn’t and instead became just one more popular Great Walk, with the distinct advantage of being easily accessible from Te Anau and a loop (loop tracks seem hard to come by in New Zealand). Unfortunately for us the storm system we saw coming in at the end of the Rees-Dart track struck Fiordland pretty hard over the first night and second day of this tramp, ushering in snow up to our knees and enough wind to make standing, let alone walking, next to impossible. In the end we turned back on the second day, stayed a second night at the Mt. Luxmore hut, and walked out and back in the reverse way to the Moturau Hut.