Hiking solo in New Zealand
by The Adventure People on 3rd September 2018
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Multiple Day Hike #1 – South Island of New Zealand
Photo 1: The view from our resting stop at Harris Saddle Shelter.
January, 2018: I had been in New Zealand a little over a month. I had traveled throughout the north island of New Zealand, and was now on the south island. While on the north island, I had met a guy from the Netherlands who was also traveling with Stray Travel Hop-On-Hop-Off (HOHO) bus. We had found, from looking at our bus schedules, that we would meet up again on the south island.
While traveling with Stray, I heard a few of the people talk about their preparations for doing some of the Great Walks that New Zealand boasts. I thought “Well, I could do that!” Since before Christmas, I had been doing more and more walking and hiking at places I stopped. My fitness level was improving. I was walking longer distances, hiking tougher hikes, and feeling half-confident that I could possibly finish a Great Walk. The big question in my mind was: how do I prepare for this and 2 will I go alone if I can’t find anyone willing to go with me? I’m not going to wait around forever for someone to come along.
Let me rewind just a bit: my parents took my siblings camping and hiking a lot while we were growing up. But we never did those activities together over multiple days (more than a week). So I have some good experience and a great appreciation for the outdoors, but this whole multiple day hike thing was just a little bit different and bigger than anything I’ve done. For me, the first time for anything new is the most intimidating. So, I spent some time wracking my brains on how to overcome this intimidation so that I could actually do a Great Walk!
Well, my Dutch friend and I met up again on the south island, a few days before the New Year. We got talking about our desire to do a multiple day hike and found out that we both didn’t want to do it alone since it would be a first for both of us. We decided then and there to team up and do a Great Walk together. We spent the final days of 2017 and first day of 2018 in Queenstown, New Zealand planning out and preparing for this adventure. We developed a list of things we would need to buy, things to do, arrangements to make, provisions to get, etc. With both of our outdoor experience put together, we were confident enough that we could adequately prepare and not put ourselves into any great danger. Besides, the beautiful trails and Great Walks of New Zealand are very busy; lots of people around to provide help if we did happen to need any. We decided we wanted to do the Routeburn Great Walk. It’s a busy Great Walk that goes from Glenorchy to the Divide. But that was only going to take 3 days; we wanted to go a bit longer. We extended our hike by adding another maintained hiking track to the itinerary; the Greenstone Track. We chose this one because it connects with the Routeburn Great Walk. Now, in total, we would be hiking for about 6 to 7 days.
Logistics we needed to consider and plan for:
- How to get from Queenstown to the start of the hiking track; an approximate distance of ~45 kilometers. This area of New Zealand is popular for hitchhiking. People do it all the time. However, that wouldn’t guarantee us a particular start time for our hike and I didn’t really like that. We hired a shuttle with an arranged pickup date and time: January 2nd, 8:05AM.
- We left the end of our trip open ended so we didn’t arrange any transportation back to Queenstown.
- You have to make reservations to camp or sleep in the track huts that are maintained by the NZ Department of Conservation (DOC). Since it was summer, we were only able to get reservations at one of the hut camp sites.
- We were keeping our eye on the weather, but we were very blessed with incredible sunshine and blue skies for probably about 97% of our hiking time.
This supply of food lasted us perfectly!
We also needed a couple pieces of gear: a tent and a cook stove. When it came time to pack, we thinned out the gear in our packs (from our general traveling condition) to include only the bare essentials. This is pretty much what I carried in my pack:
- One pair of pants;
- One pair of shorts;
- Three long sleeved, thermal shirts;
- One pair of long johns (or thermal underwear);
- Three pairs of Darn Tough wool socks;
- Hiking boots (although I wore them and didn’t “carry” them on my back per se);
- Flipflops (jandals or thongs in other countries);
- 3L water bladder that fits into my backpack;
- Toothbrush/Toothpaste/Mouthwash;
- All-purpose soap (for hair, body wash, etc);
- Rain gear for myself and my backpack;
- Batteries;
- Flashlight;
- Enamel Kathmandu Cup and Spork
- Sleeping bag;
- Thin, blow-up air mattress;
- Blow-up Pillow;
- Tent;
- Small 1-burner cook stove and gas canister.
Photo 2: First day, not long after setting off...
Now, I haven’t addressed water for the trip up to this point and here is the reason why: we didn’t have to carry water to last us the trip! The huts along the hiking track have running water from the streams which is also safe to drink. The surface water in the New Zealand southern Alps (the Fiordland National Park area) is so clean that you can drink it right out of the streams if you needed to.
Then, at least for me, there is the mental aspect of the preparations and letting family and friends know your plans. How do you tell them and not have them be worried sick the whole time you’re out wandering through the woods? The answer to that is different for everyone, but I don’t think parents can not worry. I was so stressed knowing that mom and dad were going to be extremely worried about me the whole time.
There’s also the aspect of wondering what would happen if something did go wrong? I know that I can walk for pretty long distances with a light backpack. But what about a backpack with all your food and gear? That pretty quickly can add up to 20 or 30 extra pounds hanging off your back and putting extra pressure on your legs and feet which, if you’re like me, you’re not totally accustomed to. I know I can do it if I set my mind to it, I’ll walk as fast or as slow as I need to. But what if my body can’t take it physically and I get a stress fracture or pull a muscle? There is that risk. But if you prepare in advance and you know your limits, you should be ok.
January 2nd, ~10:00am; The shuttle dropped us off at the start of the Greenstone Track and drove away. I was afraid I might panic at the sight of the shuttle van leaving. We were now committed to finishing this adventure. I might have had more of a dramatic reaction to the shuttle leaving if the weather wasn’t as beautiful as it was. The sky couldn’t have been more clear or blue. It was a beautiful morning. We ate breakfast in the car park before heaving our packs onto our backs and setting off down the trail. 12 kilometers of gently undulating forested terrain between us and our first hut campsite.
We stopped for lunch by a small river with crystal clear, very cold water and then continued on our way. The last few kilometers of hiking, each day it seemed, were the hardest. On the first day especially, I thought my worst fears had started to come true. While walking, some muscle in one of my hips started to give a bit of a sharp pain when taking longer strides or lifting my leg to take a step up. But it hadn’t been happening long when we finally reached the first hut. I figured it wasn’t time to panic about it just yet. It was the first day; it was a hard walk, and we hadn’t rested at all besides our lunch break.
I figured to give it another day or so, after a good night’s sleep and a little stretching, it should be ok. And it was!
Photo 3: Lunch spot on the first day.
The next day was a bit longer than the first; 18 kilometers to the next hut. In the morning, I would start at a good brisk pace when we were fresh and ready to go. The pace usually slowed down after lunch when we were getting a bit worn out and starting to feel the distance.
The next couple days were easy; only 8 kilometers to a place to camp near the connection with the Routeburn track. The next day we rested because the following day we planned to walk about 80% of the Routeburn track in one day. We were only able to get a campsite for one night on the eastern end of the track. In between us and that campsite was 22 kilometers and approximately 500 meters of elevation.
Photo 4: Panorama from top of the Key Summit Trail near the Lake Howden Hut.
January 6th, 8am: We were packed up and ready to tackle the 22 kilometer stretch and total of 1,000meters of elevation (500m up and 500m back down to the campsite. We ate a hardy breakfast and then set off at a good pace. As we ascended in elevation, the views became more and more spectacular, encouraging us to go on, keep hiking, and go higher. We rested and ate some trail mix at the Lake MacKenzie hut and took some time to absorb and appreciate the brilliant scenery of this spectacular location. After this resting point, we hiked the last significant portion of elevation gain and then along the ridge until we reached the Harris Saddle shelter for another break. I had to take off my boots to let my feet relax, cool off,
and dry out. It was at this point that I realized the fact that we had to descend to the same elevation that we had started that day.
Photo 5: My most favorite photo from New Zealand.
This was slightly aggravating as we had decided to make the 22 kilometer trek back (the next day) to where we had begun. This is because we wanted to end the adventure with a visit to Milford Sound and we would be so much closer if we hiked back towards the Divide.
Initially, I didn’t think I could make the hike back; I was completely shot when we arrived at our campsite. But, after a night of sound sleep, and some encouragement
from my hiking buddy, we finished with our bodies intact and our feet maybe just a little sore and worse for wear. After completing this hike, which ended up being 7 straight days of hiking through the wilderness, I knew I had learned some things; enough to give me the gumption to do another one, and this time on my own...flying solo! First thing I learned is to listen
to my body, to take a break if I started feeling spent, to eat a granola bar if I felt low on energy, and to eat a good hardy meal at the end of a long day of hiking. I became confident in our
assessment and preparation of food supplies. Our careful planning of food served us perfectly. Although, we didn’t eat much on the 7th day of hiking from our last camp site on the
track to our campsite at a campground 14 kilometers away. I was famished by the time we got to the campground which had a couple of bookshelves of food for sale to campers and hikers
like ourselves. That meal felt like a feast: spaghetti and sauce, chips, chocolate, and licorice.
Multiple Day Hike #2 – North Island of New Zealand
I knew I wanted to do another multiple day hike before leaving New Zealand. I knew this one would be on my own because I hadn’t been actively traveling for a good month and a half; I’d been doing work exchange in Taupo, NZ. But I knew the track was busy; I wasn’t afraid of being totally alone, because I wouldn’t be totally alone. There are a lot of other people on the track. I approached preparation the same way as the first multiple day hike. I made reservations online at the NZ DOC website. Went grocery shopping and bought essentially the same provisions as for the first. I made arrangements for a shuttle to drop me off at the start of the trail and pick me up four days later. I packed essentially the same clothes, thinned out the contents of my pack to only include the bare necessities. And on March 14th at 8:30am, I headed out to walk the Tongariro Northern Circuit Great Walk.
Photo 6: Ready to head out from the Whakapapa Village DOC office.
It was a chilly and rainy morning so I put my rain jacket on me and the rain cover on my pack.
Thankfully, as early morning gave way to late morning and into the afternoon, the sky broke open leaving me with a beautiful walk to get to the first hut.
I had hiked the Tongariro Crossing portion of the track back in early December. That was when it was confirmed in my mind that as long as you have friends nearby and someone to walk and talk with, you can generally hike further than you would alone. Dramatic landscapes and spectacular views don’t hurt either; they just add to the sense of accomplishment.
I knew from the beginning of this second multiple day hike that it was going to be quite different from the first. Not because it was a different island, different location, different type of terrain (sort of), but because it was just me. I wasn’t closely sharing the experience with anyone. I didn’t have anyone directly to talk to if I felt the need to discuss anything on my mind. No one was behind me to encourage me onward, no one to take my mind off of how much my feet were hurting. I noticed that I was automatically hiking slower, I felt worn out sooner, and it wasn’t quite as exciting as the first multiple day hike. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a fantastic experience and I’m so glad I did it!
Only one day of the hike was very gray and rainy. But it added to the uniqueness of the landscapes that I traversed that day; sharp volcanic gravel and brush giving way to sweeping dunes of sand and pebbles followed by hilly forest. It was truly, uniquely beautiful. Unfortunately, with the desire to preserve the functionality of my camera, I didn’t try to take pictures during the rain and so that specific day is captured only in my memory.
Photo 7: Panoramic shot looking back across a broad volcanic plain.
