Kepler Track Day 3

Saturday sees an early departure from Iris Burn at 8 am. Forecast was for rain so wanted to avoid it, if possible. It did rain for most of the day, but only lightly in the morning. Enough to put a rain cover on the pack, but not on myself!

Start off with a walk through the bush.

Then next to the river.

And across the river.

This is the scene of the Big Slip in January 1984 that wiped out a huge section of the landscape. It is slowly regenerating.

Due to the Big Slip, you spend a couple of kms in the open.

Then back into wonderful forest.

A bridge to help with a crossing.

Around halfway along is a shelter – Rocky Point. But it is infested by sandflies, so we didn’t stop there.

We did stop here and this robin took a liking to my poles.

The nice thing about rain is it makes the forest even greener.

This is near the end, getting close to Lake Manapouri.

And finally hit Lake Manapouri.

A final walk along the coast of Lake Manapouri.

And we make it to Moturau Hut. Took five hours (guidebook says six) so got there at 1 pm for lunch.

Beautiful views of Lake Manapouri from the Hut. We were glad to be there early as later in the day it started to rain quite heavily. But overall still only around 1 cm on rain compared to 15 cm on the Mildford Track that day!

Sunday is the final day, with a short walk out. Today was long, but fairly flat and easy. However legs were pretty sore from the day before, so was glad for the lack of big hills.