Giveaways
Post revised and extended, 8 April 2022, and again on 2 September 2022.
THE Kepler Track loops for sixty kilometres (37 miles) between Lake Te Anau – the largest body of fresh water in the South Island of New Zealand – and the island-studded Lake Manapōuri. Between the lakes, the track passes through some of the most spectacular mountain landscapes of Fiordland National Park.
Though it runs through a complete wilderness most of the way, the Kepler Track begins and ends within a few kilometres of the town of Te Anau. You can easily get to the track by car, bus, or water taxi.
The town of Te Anau is a lovely little low-key tourist centre catering both for the Kepler Track, Fiordland National Park, and for tours around Lake Te Anau, such as to the glow-worm caves on its rugged western shore. These glow-worm caves are now a major tourist attraction. The website nzhistory.govt.nz (2 September 2022) explains how the glow-worm caves actually gave the lake and the later township their names:
According to Māori legend there was a cave filled with glowing light somewhere on the shores of the lake. In 1948 this supposedly mythical cave was rediscovered, complete [with] the lights of countless puratoke (glow-worms). Early explanations of the meaning of the name then gave way to the obvious interpretation of the full name Te Ana-au, te: the; ana: cave; au: swirling, in reference to an underground torrent that ran through the cave.
At Te Anau township, you can find the Fiordland National Park Visitor Centre on Lakefront Drive, run by the New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC).
You can walk southwest along the shore some 500 m from the visitor centre to the Punanga Manu o Te Anau / Te Anau Bird Sanctuary, where there are rare birds such as the large red-and-blue, flightless, takahē, once thought extinct but rediscovered in the late 1940s on the western side of Lake Te Anau.
Alternatively, you can walk northward along the shore to the local headquarters of travel operators RealNZ. RealNZ's boat trips include trips to the glow-worm caves.
There is also the Fiordland Cinema, which specialises in screening the classic scenic and tourist film Ata Whenua (Shadowland), the traditional Māori name for this southern realm, so-called because of low sun and the shadows of mountains, as in these photos that I took at Piopiotahi-Milford Sound, and on the Milford Track, which most people start out on after taking a boat trip to a jetty on the northernmost extremity of Lake Te Anau.
The Kepler Track is at the southern end of Lake Te Anau and describes a loop, a fact that also makes it fully accessible by road. Furthermore, according to the official 100% Pure New Zealand website, newzealand.com, what’s unique about the Kepler Track is that it was designed from scratch. According to newzealand.com (8 April 2022),
Unlike many other multi-day walks, which evolved from Māori greenstone trails or pioneer exploration routes, the Kepler Track was custom-made, built for pleasure, rather than necessity.
Opened in 1988, the track was carefully planned to show walkers all the best features of Fiordland - moss-draped beech forest, prolific bird life, tussock high country, huge mountain ranges, cascading waterfalls, vast glacier-carved valleys, luxuriant river flats and limestone formations. The track’s construction makes for easier walking. Most streams are bridged, boardwalks cover boggy areas and the very steep sections have steps. Walk the Kepler and you’ll see everything that’s marvelous about this exquisite corner of the world.
Although you can walk both ways, most trampers start off tramping to the Luxmore Hut high above Lake Te Anau. The Kepler normally requires bookings during the Great Walks season (October-April).
The Kepler Track certain does make for magnificent views of the mountains and of the two large lakes that it loops between!
I was so impressed by the views in the vicinity of Luxmore Hut and the prospect of climbing nearby Mount Luxmore in the snow season (I'd scrambled to the top in March, when it was just rocks), that I volunteered to be a warden at Luxmore Hut at the end of August and early September 2022. I am writing this update while I am at Luxmore Hut. There's hardly anyone here, and it is freezing!
I got flown into Luxmore, where I had to perform all the usual duties of a hut warden, in a tiny helicopter. Here's a photo of myself by the helicopter down in Te Anau. I seem to be looking a bit nervous!
But as you can see in the following video, the view was great!
The views are also incredible from nearly all the parts of the Kepler Track that are above the treeline; but by the same token, parts of it are very exposed as well. This far south, it is prone to snowfall at any time of the year and also to avalanches and to the danger of slipping on ice and plunging a thousand metres into Lake Te Anau. Fortunately, that wasn't a concern on both of the previous trips I did, as it was warm and sunny. But to the practiced eye it is not the sort of place you would want to be in bad weather, and there are lots of warnings about that as well as two purpose-built emergency shelters on the highest part of the ridge between Luxmore Hut and Iris Burn Hut: the Forest Burn Shelter and the Hanging Valley Shelter. These shelters each have water and a toilet, to cater for other sorts of emergencies as well.
There are two purpose-built emergency shelters on the highest part of the track between Luxmore Hut and Iris Burn Hut. These are the Forest Burn Shelter and the Hanging Valley Shelter. They also have toilets and water taps, for other sorts of emergencies.
In the remainder of this post, I have a brief description of my first trip on the Kepler a few years back, and then a second one in March 2022. I have illustrated them with photos taken the second time, in 2022.
Because the huts were full, we had to start off our tramp heading in the opposite direction, hiking towards Rainbow Reach carpark and onwards to our first stop at Moturau Hut on the shores of Lake Manapōuri. (Moturau, meaning 'many islands', is one of the older historic names for Lake Manapōuri.)
We left at two pm and tramped nine and a half kilometres to the carpark at Rainbow Reach, which took us around two and a half hours. From there we crossed the Waiau River on a swing bridge and carried on for six kilometres up the track towards Moturau Hut, where the hut warden was waiting for us.
From the Kepler Track carpark, it had taken us around five hours to reach Moturau Hut, walking along the river’s edge and through a swampy area of wetlands.
At the Moturau Hut, we saw kea outside the hut pulling out the nails. The kea are New Zealand's famous alpine parrots, which look a bit like small eagles thanks to a massively hooked bill that serves as a sort of everything-opener. These mischievous birds are very curious and as well as attacking windscreen wipers, the odd car tyre and orange track markers, they even enjoy pulling nails out of buildings.
Kea love to gnaw on non-nutritious substances that humans introduce to their environment, perhaps because these things are a novelty to this famously large-brained parrot. Even when they obviously aren't edible, the kea seems to chew on them for fun.
Unfortunately, these habits put the kea at risk of being poisoned: above all by lead. For some years now, DOC hut maintenance has included the removal of lead-headed roof nails and lead flashing, and their replacement with lead-free alternatives.
After spending the night in Moturau, we tramped on toward Iris Burn Hut. It was a long stretch of a little over sixteen kilometres between these two huts, heading uphill through beech forest and a winding gorge for around five to six hours. At Iris Burn, I heard kiwi calling out in the bush at night.
From Iris Burn Hut we got some really beautiful views, which only became more impressive as we tramped the five to six-hour walk, a bit under fifteen kilometres, to our next stop at Luxmore Hut. This route takes you up along a ridge just under Mt Luxmore, which has stunning vistas of Lake Te Anau and the Murchison Mountains.
The route down the mountain leads to Brod Bay campsite on the shores of Lake Te Anau, a distance of a bit over eight kilometres.
And from there it was only a short one-and-a-half hour walk back to the Kepler Track carpark where we had started.
This time round, I went in the counterclockwise direction. I chose to park my car at the control gates which control how much water is allowed out of Lake Te Anau into the Waiau River and thence to Lake Manapōuri, not far from the Fiordland visitor centre.
There's lots of stuff about heroic hydroelectric engineering here, as well as the history of the Waiau River and some local day walks, as well as the Kepler Track.
And then it was an hour and a half along the lake, first Dock Bay and then Brod Bay.
After Brod Bay, it was an eight hundred metre-plus vertical ascent in one day, from 210 metres above sea level at Lake Te Anau up to about 1,040 metres at Luxmore Hut. On a fine day, it's about two and a half hours more to Luxmore Hut (four and a half in bad weather).
You come up to some limestone cliffs which are really wonderful. Past the limestone cliffs you come to a grassy area, from which you can see Lake Te Anau and Lake Manapōuri at the same time.
If you look over the nearby arm of Lake Te Anau, known as the South Fiord, you can see the Murchison Mountains where the takahē was rediscovered in 1948.
There were kiwi out and about by the hut's woodshed and around the hut overnight. You could hear them call, and so you could go out with your red light to see them (they can't see red light, and forage as usual while you shine a red light on them).
On the second day, the sunrise from Luxmore Hut was amazing. I got a good view from a spot just on the way up to the Luxmore Cave, which is about ten minutes from the hut.
There seem to be a lot more birds on the Kepler as compared to the last time I was there, and it also seemed to be a bit greener. There was an interesting bunch of doctors, internationals, locals, and Kiwi families holidaying around New Zealand. None wore a mask; I was the only one apart from the DOC warden.
And so, I left at about nine o'clock and got to the top of Mount Luxmore at ten-thirty. The summit of Mount Luxmore is 1,472 metres or 4,829 feet above sea level. From the top of Mount Luxmore, you could see ranges and ranges of mountains. This whole day was a good six hours hiking, on one of the most picturesque stretches of track.
A couple helicoptered in from the comparatively luxurious Fiordland Lodge and landed on the helipad by Luxmore Hut. They got to the top of Mount Luxmore with us, and then said to the rest of the company, oh can we buy cheese scones at the next stop? Not counting the, the next stop was Iris Burn Hut.
And, no, there was no shop up here on the mountaintops. We thought it was hilarious, but I suppose if you hung around places like Fiordland Lodge you might think that there were shops everywhere. They were obviously too time-pressured to enjoy the walk. Rich, but poor in other ways.
The trail was pretty rugged down to the Forest Burn Shelter, or Forest Bivvy as we called it. I left my water bottle, or it fell off somewhere, so I was scrounging water the whole way. I had lunch between the Forest Bivvy and Hanging Valley Shelter. You could see one of the fiords of Fiordland from here.
I discovered that I could get water from the tap at Hanging Valley Shelter.
The ridgetop trail looked like the Great Wall of China in these parts, and the whole area was just spectacular.
And then we descended 800 metres or more than two and a half thousand feet, down to the Iris Burn Hut.
You can camp outside, but I saw a notice saying that kea attack tents at 9 pm, 2:30 am and 4 am. A roster, on the sound principle of waiting till you have gone back to sleep before having another go at your possessions, is just the sort of thing that kea would come up with.
Fearless as well as clever, the kea also break into everything in the hut and even roam its corridors between the bunks and the kitchen. Even inside the hut, they woke us up at 7:30 am.
That night, we walked to Iris Burn Falls at about 9 pm, so I didn't get photos. People saw kiwi on the way. And I swam in the river.
The next day, I went on to Motorau Hut. On the way, I took photos of a sign describing a big slip that had happened in 1984. It is a huge area that has just slipped away from the rock face. The hike to Moturau was supposed to take six hours, but fortunately it was now on the flat.
And so, the trip to Moturau only took me four hours: two hours to the Rocky Point Shelter, which is not so much of a lifesaving shelter as rather a sheltered spot to have lunch, with a toilet about 500 metres away and a tap on a hose. And then another two hours to Moturau Hut.
It was lovely coming out and seeing the swamp and the moss in the low-lying part of the tramp. Thinking back, it reminds me of what the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins had to say about a place in Scotland that was probably just as remote in his day ('Inversnaid', 1881):
“What would the world be, once bereft/Of wet and wildness? Let them be left, wildness and wet; /Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet”
Before the last section, which involved hiking over another primordial wetland, I arrived at Moturau Hut, next to the gorgeous Lake Manapōuri, which does indeed have many islands.
And the kea were just as naughty at Moturau. In the following video, two kea try an apparently well-known routine in which one would create a distraction by coming right up to me in front, while the other comes in from the side to have a go at my pack and see which my possessions it could destroy / eat / fly away with. Velociraptors of vandalism, in other words.
But seriously, I have heard that one thing they love to do is to hook car keys with that bill and go and drop them in the nearest body of water. That serves to distract the humans more than anything else!
So, you must watch your car keys like a hawk and not leave them lying around, because, well, a little wannabe hawk has its eyes out for them as well.
Here is a video I have made of some of the overall highlights of my March 2022 hike:
One of the hut wardens I met along the journey had caught Covid from inside the hut, as so few people are wearing masks: she was now suffering from long Covid. I'm going to be on duty for a week as a volunteer hut warden at Luxmore Hut this winter, for a week, and that is something to think about.
For track transport, including a water taxi on Lake Te Anau, you can use the services of Tracknet and Fiordland Outdoors. Both companies are coach operators; Fiordland Outdoors also operate other modes and run the water taxi from Te Anau township to Brod Bay, which some prefer to parking at a bush roadend.
I got ferried by Tracknet back to where my car was parked near the Kepler Control Gates, since, as you can see from the map, there is a hike from the area known as Rainbow Reach on Lake Manapōuri up the Waiau River and the main road to Lake Te Anau, and I couldn't be bothered with this last little bit. It's called the Lake2Lake trail, but I didn't have any gas left in the tank. Personally speaking, I mean.
What else? There are solar-powered electric lights in all of the huts on the track, and I had a lovely venison pie at Te Anau township when I had finished. You always need to keep an eye out for what the Aussies call bush tucker and what we call wild foods in places like this—and I was not disappointed.
If you liked the post above, check out my new book about the South Island! It's available for purchase from this website.
Subscribe to our mailing list to receive free giveaways!
