After a good night sleep in the Welcome Rock Slate Hut, I got ready for the next phase of my adventures—The Kepler Track. It was super foggy and a bit drizzly when I got up and started packing for my ride back down to the truck. I checked the weather forecast and it looked like I was probably going to be hiking in rain. Bummer.

I decided to ride the road back rather than the trail to avoid the level of crabbiness that riding with a heavy pack produced the first time. I had to walk up the hill, but overall it was probably the right decision.

At the Garston ski hut, there were 3 bike packers, so I wasn’t really able to go into the hut and sort all my gear, so I did it in the Ute. It was total pea soup again and the thought of hiking and camping in the rain wasn’t sounding like a great way to start Kepler, but there you have it. Harden up mate. Quit your whinging.

I drove down Nevis road and headed toward Mossburn where I stopped and had a coffee in one the cafes there. There were a million tourists there. The coffee was good, but I was just freezing. I started to question my choice of my ultra-lightweight sleeping bag for Kepler. As I drove toward Te Anau, an amazing thing happened—all the clouds just dissipated and it turned into a beautiful sunny day!

Being cheap, I did not organize a shuttle for Kepler. The plan was to drive to the Rainbow Reach trailhead then hike around to Broad Bay camp for the first night. This allowed me to finish the tramp where my truck would be parked.

Kepler Day 1: Rainbow Reach to Broad Bay (14.5 km)

After having been cold the last couple of days, it was just sweaty hot in the parking lot and the day was absolutely bluebird. Wow! This is not what I expected … no complaints. A little hot was no problemo. I gathered up my stuff, locked the car and headed out on the 14.5 km trip to the night’s camp. It was generally easy walking through the beech forest. One big annoyance is that there is a gun range on the other side of the river and the constant “bang, bang, bang” really put a damper on the tranquility of the forest. Plus, as an American who left the US in part to get away from the guns, it was a bit jarring.

I made it to the camp area around 5:30 pm and there was nobody there. It had a nice shelter and some good places to set up the tent. It was still sunny, but you could see the clouds moving in fast and Windy was indicating that it would rain later that night. As a side note, Windy has, unquestionably the most accurate weather model for New Zealand. At least I had a lovely day of hiking before it started raining!

I ate dinner down on the beach as the sandflies were pretty thick in the trees. One French lady showed up and set up her tent … it was the exact same MacPac tent as mine. We chatted briefly, but her English was limited. She was doing the long hike from Broad Bay to Iris Burn. Ooooh. But after hearing how much tramping she had been doing, I don’t think it was going to be an issue for her. The beach sanctuary from the sandflies worked well until about 6:45 pm when the true magnitude of the sandfly density became apparent. I pulled the plug and headed to my tent to read. And there I stayed. Damn bugs.

Kepler Day 2: Broad Beach to Luxmore Hut (5.3km, 880 m elevation)

A bunch of people had shown up later in the evening and were camped there, but as usual, I was the first one up and out. It was raining lightly as I started up the climb. The trail is in great shape and climbs at a steady, but not overly steep grade up through some really beautiful beach forest. It was nice having the forest to myself and I thought there was a good chance I would not encounter anyone since I got going so early. I failed to account for the trail runners who, understandably, passed me like I was standing still.

Little did I know, but the Kepler Track is home to the Kepler Challenge, “New Zealand’s Premier Mountain Run” or so their website states. The current record is held by Martin Dent who knocked it out in 4:33:37 in 2013. I was pretty sure that I was not going to be getting any where near Martin’s record, so he probably slept a little better knowing I would bring it in at a leisurely 4 days.

Anywho, several speedy young people blew past me as I climbed. I reached a cool section that traverses some limestone cliffs and requires some stairs to get up and over. The rain stopped and it was just now an eerie fog. The next group to pass me where six women from the UK doing it as a day hike up to Luxmore Peak. We chatted and took pictures for each other at bush line. The weather was clearing and it was a cool look with clouds and a spot of blue sky.

As always, I showed up at the hut at a ridiculously early hour and the warden was still busy cleaning it. There were 3 or 4 Keas hanging around on the outside deck which made me smile. I love Keas, but they are cheeky buggers. I dropped my pack on some picnic tables, pulled out a few things to claim a bunk with and went to check out the situation. The English women were there hanging out so I asked them to watch my pack and “don’t let the Keas eat it.” They said sure!

The bunk rooms were upstairs so I went up there. The warden was cleaning but then said “if you want your pack to survive you better get it before the Keas do.” I looked out the window and the Keas were heading for my stuff. The English ladies were not making an effort to prevent this theft. Doh! I raced out and saved it from the offending parrots. Whew.

Warning Small Diversion Ahead: I am going to take a small diversion that I promise you will tie back to the Kepler story and is also a broader commentary on so many things going on in society these days. There is a phenomenon called the Dunning-Krueger effect that describes the relationship between wisdom and confidence.

When we first gain a little wisdom about a topic, our confidence grows quickly until we reach a point that makes us think that we are very knowledgable. This is false confidence and really represents our ascent to the peak of “Mt Stupid.” The peak of Mt. Stupid is when we know something but not enough to know what we don’t know. A little knowledge has blinded us to the depth of our ignorance.

Some people just stop at the peak of Mt. Stupid and never advance. Let’s for example point a finger at, hmmmm, anti-vaccine people. Sorry, not sorry if I offended you.

As we continue our accumulation of wisdom, our eyes start to open to the vast expanse of what we don’t know and how little we actually know. This causes us to fall into the valley of despair and our confidence in our understanding of the topic plummets. It is a humbling place to be.

As we continue to accumulate wisdom on the topic we start to have a slow growth in our confidence and proceed gently up the slope of enlightenment. Unlike climbing Mt. Stupid, the slope of enlightenment is gentle and long. We can see it rising above us always reminding us there is so much more to learn. If all goes well we can reach the plateau of sustainability where we both have a tremendous amount of well vetted knowledge and a healthy dose of humility that keeps us curious and searching for more knowledge.

The ascent of Mt. Stupid becomes particularly prevalent in the days of the internet where very little is vetted or qualified. It is a high speed escalator to the top of Mt. Stupid. When I did my PhD, it required me to read over 1000 scientific journal articles around the fairly narrow topic “The Tectonic Evolution of the Western Pacific.” That was a lot of work to get knowledgable. When you hear someone say, “well, I read an article and the study said coffee is bad for you,” you should ask them “how was the study conducted?” Most likely, they will not know. They are on the top of Mt. Stupid.

Back to the Regularly Scheduled Program: Ok, enough of that and back to the story. And I promise you the diversion will tie into the story. If not, just enjoy the picture of the Kea.

I unpacked my stuff and went down to the main room to have some lunch. As I was sitting there, the warden came over and we started chatting. I relayed the basics of my story of how I got to New Zealand, that I had studied geology and my plans for the trip. It was a pleasant chat but then he started pushing on me how I didn’t go slow enough. That I hadn’t seen the slime mold and didn’t notice all the different types of white flowers. It was a fair enough point and I suggested that I had seen a lot of the white flowers but didn’t know their names and that yes, I wish I knew more about the botany of New Zealand. His premise was that all mountains were the same—Chile, New Zealand, the Rockies … all the same. However, the real important and interesting stuff was plants and the “natural” environment.

I tried to explain to him that all mountains were not the same, but he would have none of it. As I said, when you are standing on the top of Mt. Stupid, you are sure you are right. Now let me be clear, I have stood atop Mt. Stupid more times than I care to think about so this is not to say I am not guilty of the same thing, but what stuck with me was the juxtaposition of his area of knowledge of botany and trying to get people to look and understand the plants better against his hard and fast stance on the top of Mt. Stupid of Geology. There you have it—a clear demonstration that knowledge is domain-specific.

Since I had some time to kill, I wandered around taking pictures and took the side hike to the cave not far from the hut. A couple of people were coming out as I went in, but I pretty much had it to myself. You can get pretty far back in the cave with just a few low scrambly sections to navigate. There are some pretty cool formations considering this is an uncontrolled cave with easy access. After about 300 meters I decided I should turn back since I was in there by myself. It is a worthy detour for sure.

The hut is nice and pretty comfortable with a view to die for. It was a good day 2. The hut was chocker block full, but once everyone settled down I slept pretty well despite the fear I was standing on Mt. Stupid on some topic I was sure I was right about.

Kepler Day 3: Luxmore Hut to Iris Burn Hut (17.2 km, 816 m elevation)

As is my way, I got going early in the morning. As I was making my coffee, I could see that there was a light dusting of snow on the peaks around us.

The views at the Luxmore hut are great, but the trail climbs steady up on your way to Luxmore Peak and that is where the jaw dropping really starts. It was cold and I was struggling to keep my hands warm, but the lighting was great. In places there was still a little bit of snow still on the ground.

As I climbed, I saw one other person coming up behind me. I got to the fork to the short climb to the top of Luxmore Peak and scrambled up to the top. Erika (I learned her name a bit later) showed up just behind me. We stood there marveling at the view. Truly amazing. We chatted a bit and took each other’s picture. She was originally was from Scotland and was a fiddle player that now lived in Queenstown.

After summiting Luxmore peak, the trail traverses along a narrow ridge for quite a long time. There is a fair amount of up and down along the way, but it is mostly pretty easy going…or at least it was that day.

The ridge is very exposed and it would not be a fun place to be in a howling gale. Evidently, people have been literally blown off the ridge. The DOC often closes this segment of the trail if the weather is looking bad; I could totally see why.

Erika and I kept crossing paths as the we traversed the ridge and it was nice to chat to such a lovely person. She got me excited to learn about a genre of music I know very little about, Scottish and Irish fiddle music. Evidently, there is a big festival in Nelson in August, so now I will have to go to learn more.

The one part of the hike I was not particularly looking forward to was the steep downhill to Iris Burn hut. Well, more accurately my old beat up knees were not looking forward to it.

There was a little lookout that required a bit a scramble to get up to and I debated whether it was worth the effort. In the end, I dragged myself up. Erika was there and we chatted and ate some food.

As I was taking off my boots on the deck, the sandflies let themselves be known. I was really glad I had manage to snag a hut reservation. There was an 8 bunk room on the lower floor where I grabbed a spot. I knew it would be nicer since the upstairs area felt very hot and being the thermo-nuclear heat generating machine that I am, I knew that would not go well for my sleep.

I got settled in, had some dinner, read my book and felt so lucky to have done that hike on such a great day. I have always considered Routeburn Day #2 to be, unquestionably, the greatest single day of hiking in New Zealand. My absolute confidence in the assertion has remained unshakable for years, but I will say the ridge day on Kepler rivals Routeburn. Now I have a moral dilemma!

Kepler Day 4: Iris Burn to Rainbow Reach (23.3km, 340 m elevation)

Erika had a shuttle that was coming at 2 to take her back to her car, so I offered to give her a ride if we got there early and at a similar time. Today was a long but much easier day — mostly down hill through the beach forest.

The walking was easy going for all but a few little hills, boggy areas and rocky sections. Mostly it was like walking on a rubberized running track because the forest floor was so soft and spongy.

The beech forest and fern gardens were incredible. This was one of the nicest sections of forest I have walked through on the South Island. At one point I spotted an incredible purple mushroom!

I walked past the Motarua hut where a lot of people will stay one more night. It is right along Shallow Lake and looked nice, but I don’t think it is worth taking another day there in my humble opinion as it is only 5 km to the end.

Erika had waited for me and we finished the last couple of kilometers together. I said to her “That had to be the easiest 23km day I have ever hiked!” and she agreed. We piled into the truck and I dropped her at her car.

It was a great trip and I really hope I can take Susanne on it someday. The ridge day would be hellish if the weather was terrible, but I just got blessed.