Hello all!
I promised update emails from my walk in New Zealand. Now that I’ve finished, I’m making some time to put some memories “on paper”.
I’ve been walking for the last 60 days on a trail called the Te Araroa, Māori for the Long Pathway. It wiggles from Cape Reinga at the northernmost point of New Zealand’s North Island to Bluff, the (almost) most southerly point of the South Island, just over 3,000 km long.
When deliberating what to do with myself before reaching the Himalaya for trekking season, I decided to do a long walk, preferably in the summer season. That narrowed my options, and the TA jumped to the top of the list. I had two months to burn before turning for Nepal, so I decided to walk the trail through the South Island, skipping the road walking of the North Island section of trail.
I’ve been set on walking a long trail, or thru hike, for about 14 years. I was introduced to the idea of spending an extended period with a pack on the back by the Martin Sheen film, The Way, which is about a man who looses his son late in life. The film follows his walk along Spain’s Camino de Santiago where he spreads his son’s ashes along the way. The US has the top three thru hikes in the world, the Triple Crown of the Pacific Crest, Continental Divide and Appalachian Trails, the PCT, CDT and AT respectively. These are all famous for their distance, continuity, and the mountain ranges they follow. So, why haven’t I hiked one yet?? Well, they take time. To finish the PCT in three months, one would need to walk 29.5 miles/day without a single day off. The ultra runner, Karel Sabbe, holds the record for the PCT, 46.5 days, an average of 55.75 miles/day (mind blown emoji here!!). Normal humans can’t recover rapidly enough to tolerate such distances and need 4-5 months to walk the trail. Similar times are necessary for the AT and CDT. Time of year for these hikes is April-November. As a field geologist, these are tricky times to skip work. So, in the southern hemisphere with two months to walk, the TA through the South Island was a perfect fit!
I left California and jumped into the future, landing in Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand with a population of 1.7 million, on December 30th. I bussed down to Wellington, NZ’s windy capital, and rang in the New Year on the Harbor with some new Dutch friends.
Not interested in spending much time in the city, I rode a ferry across the Cook Strait to the peaceful town of Picton, my gateway to the Marlborough Sound and the beginning of my long walk. I spent a day shopping for the last of my supplies and waiting around for the post office to open up so I could ship food ahead to points down the trail. Then, I was off on a smaller ferry for the start of the trail on the South Island, Ship Cove and the Queen Charlotte Track.
In the months leading up to the trail, I’d had my doubts about traveling alone for two months. I’ve done it before, but after a year of working mostly solo in the field, I was craving some company. A good friend reminded me that solo travel is the best way to meet new people. You have the space to open up to new people and are eager for new encounters. On the ferry to Ship Cove, I met a wonderful Spaniard, Javi, a doctor from Bilbao. We quickly took a liking to each other, sharing in some great conversations, me stumbling to keep up with his quick Castilian Spanish, and joined forces and walked the Queen Charlotte section together to Havelock. This was my introduction to the strong community that forms amongst people walking the trail together.
On the second night of the Queen Charlotte Track, we were camped up on the ridge between Kenepuru Sound and the Bay of Many Coves. Here we met the Williams, a family of 6 hiking the entire TA with kiddos ranging from age 6 to 13(?). I was stunned and impressed by this family. Dairy farmers, they’ve uprooted for 7 months, schooling the kids on trail and walking ~20 km/day with huge packs. This wouldn’t be the first time I’d cross paths with them, nor the only family with young kids that I’d encounter along the way. These guys impressed on me the importance of disregarding social convention and choosing to live the way you are called to.
Javi, being very fit and having walked other long hikes in Europe and North Africa, set a high pace out of the gate. With tendinitis in my knees and nasty blisters, I limped into Havelock, the first resupply town on the South Island. I needed a day off and took my first “zero” day in this village famous for its green lipped mussels. The go-to accommodation when in town for resupply is tenting in a holiday park. This experience is variable, from camping in a hostel’s backyard to a proper developed campground; essential amenities include showers, laundry, a kitchen, wifi and walking access to food; bonuses include a TV lounge with a decent dvd selection.
I said goodbye to Javi, who plowed on to the next section setting record times, and made my way to Nelson for a side trip to Abel Tasman National Park. This would be my introduction to the Kiwi way to manage a National Park, and, The Great Walks, a set of well built and tightly managed scenic tramps (hikes). Throughout my walk, I’ve been increasingly impressed by the management style of public lands by NZ’s Department of Conservation for reasons I’ll expand on as I go.
People often say that New Zealand is partially frozen in time with many parallels to the US before the introduction of the smart phone. The country has no interstates, most communities are rural and agricultural, with independent farms yet to be amalgamated by corporate agriculture. Even childhood seems to have avoided the hard blows of technology. I have yet to see the iPad parenting so common in public in the US. I see kids roaming around unsupervised, ripping bikes through campgrounds reminiscent of how my parents let me roam on our summer camping trips to Northern California.
Then there’s the country’s national pastime, tramping (hiking). With most of the National Parks and conservation areas being accessible only by foot, overnight family tramping trips are common, bolstered by the hut system that is maintained by DoC. Huts have bunk beds with a mattress, rain capture water tanks- some of which are plumbed to sinks inside, countertops for cooking, dining tables, wood burning stoves, and drop toilets. The fanciest of huts on the Great Walks require reservations far in advance and have extra amenities, even gas-burners that DoC helicopters in fuel for. Most of the popular tracks here have a hut every 4-8 hours of walking. These provide a space to sleep, cook and rest out of the elements and away from the maddening sand flies. I reckon the hut system is a big part of tramping’s popularity throughout the NZ. The hut provides respite and a sense of security. No matter how bad it is out there, you can always make it to a hut and throw out your bed roll on the floor.
I enjoyed the Abel Tasman immensely. I swam in the warm waters of Tasman Bay every, met heaps of lovely Kiwi and Aussie trampers, and used the mild track as a recovery walk for my blistered feet and sore knees, they’d need it for the next section.
After a night in Nelson, Tasman Bay’s booming metropolis, I landed a quick hitch to Pelorus Bridge, the beginning of the Richmond Ranges section, or “the Richmonds”. This is a much discussed section of the trail. Leading up to it, hikers are gauging the amount of food they’ll carry for it, the number of days needed to make it through to the next resupply in St. Arnaud. Afterwards, the section lives on in countless conversations about the state of the track, the number of puads (Pointless Up And Downs), the nearo (nearly-zero) days between grueling climbs, the damn wasps!!, the DAMN sandflies!!!! I landed at Pelorus Bridge campsite at 8am and made my way down the gravel road to the trailhead.
I took 8 days to make it through the Richmonds as a part of a large bubble of hikers who had built up on trail after concentrating in Wellington for New Year’s. This was a blessing, as I met most of the hikers with whom I’d spend the next 50 days walking amongst.
One of these hikers was a young Kiwi named Blake. We met on the road walk from Pelorus Bridge and hit it off pretty quickly. Blake tried to impart the need to maintain equanimity when swarmed by the bloody thirsty midges known as sandflies. Regardless of my meditation practice, he couldn’t have met a less receptive student. At the base of Mt. Rintoul, the centerpiece alpine scramble of the Richmond Alpine track, we joined forces with a lovely Dutch gal, Chris. The three of us spent the remaining four days of the Richmonds together.
This is a good time to digress on the topic of trails here in NZ. The popular tracks like Abel Tasman, the Routeburn, the Kepler, are well maintained, proper trails that have been built to survive annual runoff and be safely travelled by the masses. This is not the case for the vast majority of NZ’s trails, and certainly not for the TA. Most of the TA is sort of an afterthought of rarely used tracks that have been connected to link north and south. In fact, I’m not sure if there’s ever been any trail building at all along most of the route, or if it’s just the most well trodden foot paths of the old deer hunters and trampers. Kiwis don’t see the value in switchbacks, they’d rather just get it over with and go straight up or straight down the thing. And river tracks, they’re a whole other beast that I don’t have the creativity to describe in words so let me share some photos-
The Richmonds were tough, but a challenge in good company makes for good times and better memories.
The next stop was St. Arnaud. The bubble cruised out of the Richmond section, descending in a hungry frenzy upon the General Store and Alpine Lodge for a feed and rest. Copious amounts of chips, ice cream bars, meat pies, burgers, hot chips, flat whites, coke, and pizza soothed the hiker hunger we’d all developed of the preceding week.
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