Kepler Track - Day 2

Day 2 began relatively early, as lots of the other backpackers started rummaging around the bunk room and woke us up. We left Luxmore Hut around 9ish after a camper's breakfast of muesli bars and tea, and began what we thought would be a somewhat easier walk than yesterday - at least that was what it looked like on the map....

The morning began quite overcast, although it soon brightened up.

Luxmore Hut from further up the mountain path.

The peak of Mount Luxmore - we steadily climbed round and up almost to the top. We didn't opt to leave the path and climb all the way up, for reasons made clear below....

Unfortunately about half an hour into the day, as we began climbing Mt Luxmore, Craig's knee suddenly gave way. Luckily a passing trekker lent Craig one of her walking poles for the day - otherwise I don't think he would have made it.

A rest stop with a view.

Quick - hide from the Ringwraiths!

The walk today was mainly along the alpine ridges - usually Anne was miles in front, I was in the middle, and Craig was miles behind. At least being so exposed we could all still see each other, even from the other side of the mountain ridges...

One of the negatives about being spaced so far apart from each other was having to take awful self portraits like this one...

Craig having a much needed break.

The path goes up...

The small black dot is Craig.

Finally we start the downhill slog...

Unfortunately it involved climbing down several precarious staircases like this. Not fun when you have a massive backpack on making you very top heavy - I'm glad it wasn't windy!

All the staircases - with Craig at the very top.

Lake Manapouri in the distance. (Where we will be tomorrow.)

After this view point, we reached the bush line, and went steeply downhill through forest once more. I was keeping up with Anne now, but we lost Craig altogether. We would have stopped for him to catch up, but I was also in agony by this point - my legs do not like steep downhills, and I'd developed open pressures sores across my hips from the rather ill-fitting backpack.

We came from up there somewhere...

All in all, Day 2 was definitely the toughest day. What should have taken us about 6 hours, from Luxmore Hut to Iris Burn Hut, ended up taking us about 10hrs. Anne and I reached the Hut a good hour before Craig, dumped our stuff and had a quick break before going back up the hill to see if we could find him. After dinner, we were all so exhausted we collapsed to our bunks by about 8.30pm.