Distance: 5.6 km (3.0 DOC hours) - Tramping track - Easy-moderate terrain
Altitude: 478m to 919m. Gain: 497m. Loss: 61m . Gradient: 6 deg (Moderate)
Skills: - Occasional rivers (3/6)

Tramping track (4/9)
Cut, marked tramping track: natural, rough ground surface

Primary, mapped (1/5)
Formal route, on maps, principal access to hut or along range / catchment

Moderate (difficulty: 3/5)
Occasional moderate climbs

Easy-moderate (difficulty: 2/5)
Tussock / river-gravel / open bush / cut track

None (difficulty: 1/7)
No alpine skills required

Occasional rivers (difficulty: 3/6)
Occasional rivers - impassible after heavy rain

Unknown (difficulty: 0/7)
Not specified

No description

Note: Described in the reverse direction to your journey

From the ramshackle Kay Creek Hut follow the markers which drop initially eastwards and fords the creek (probably impossible after rain). The track then drops southwards down the true left of the creek for a while before a 2nd fording, again impassible after rain. Its on down valley through a mixture of bush and river flats with great camping spots. The track does not follow Kay Creek right down into the Caples, but instead climbs up above the lower gorge and swings westwards, dropping down to flat ground on the true left of the Caples between the Kay and Fraser valleys. A T-intersection of tracks is reached between the Kay and Fraser tracks, with the 3rd track dropping down to the swing bridge over the Caples at the western end of the large clearing, not marked correctly on the map.

Note: The Upper Caples Hut was given/sold to the New Zealand Deerstalkers Association in mid 2014. It is now a private, locked hut. All track markers and signs between the Caples Track and the Caples swing bridge, which used to pass by the hut, have been removed. The track on the true right of the swing bridge now heads southeast straight up to the Caples track, several hundred meters west of the hut. As the Caples track actually passes to the west of the hut (this is shown incorrectly on the map) you wouldn't know it was there walking along the Caples track if you weren't looking at the now obsolete map.