9 KEPLER TRACK: Earning its place
IT WAS 1988.
The Department of Conservation was just one year old, New Zealand was mired in the stock market crash and Fiordland had a brand new track. Not just a track, but a great one. With tops, forest, rivers, lakes, wetlands, views – the whole gamut. And three large, purpose-built huts.
Fiordland’s other two premier tracks, the Milford and Routeburn, both had a pedigree dating back more than a century. Unlike those through-tracks with their complicated access, the
