Te Araroa 3000km NZ trail

[Onestepmore]

Has anyone here walked this?

[wayno]

http://www.teararoa.org.nz/thetrail/
i've done small pieces of it. I've looked at where it goes and have travelled through other areas where the trail runs. I researched it to see if i would want to do more of it.
its not designed as solely a bushwalking trail.
theres a fair bit of road bashing in it, a lot of it goes through farmland,
it was designed to cover a mixture of back country terrain and areas of historica significance in nz.
if you're looking to see the most scenic places in nz then i'd give most of it a miss.
i've tramped over a fair portion of nz and there's very little of it i've tramped where the trail runs. so its not somewhere i've chosen to want to tramp much of.
compared to the scenery that is available in nz, personally i think a lot of the scenery on it is pretty boring by nz standards, i'm not motivated to cover much more of it.. i watched a slide show of someone who has covered most of the trail but it just reinforced by thoughts about the trail.
its not all well maintained, some stretches require navigation through thick overgrown bush. its still a work in progress.
it vaguely runs north and south, but because of land access issues, in various places it takes large snaking deviations to connect up different parts of it by getting around land where access was denied by private landowners.
some people just create their own version of the trail and deviate to take in the part of the country they would rather do.
i met an american lady at the end of her trip to nz, she had come to do te araroa but was quickly disappointed by the nature of the walking and changed her plans totally to do the dept of conservations great walks instead, not a bad idea, definitely more scenic, and only a couple of the walks are on the te araroa trail. it's nothing like places like the appalachian or pacific crest trail where theres more of an infrastructure for people to mail ahead supplies and gear to unofficial post offices that will cache it for them near the trail. you have to work out how to reprovision yourself and that will mean deviating some distance off the trail in places.. in a lot of places you'll need to provide all your camping gear, it does go through a lot of remote areas.
some people have a view of nz as some sort of scenic shangri la and just get disappointed by Te Araroa... theres a lot more farmland to nz than there is wilderness and the trail covers a lot of that land. don't know about you but i've spent too much time staring at farmand and I'm not motivated to spend any more time than i have to walking through it.
but good on anyone who completes the trail if its the sort of challenge you are looking for to "complete a long trail" and all the challenges it throws at you then they have my respect. perhaps i'm too fussy and spoilt for choice by nz scenery, then so be it.
bit disappointed by the govt though, they gave 5 million to make the trail then gave 50 million to throw at building bike trails around the country, needless to say the standard of the bike trails is just a bit better than the standard of te araroa. the money was given to local councils to develop the cycling trails, in my opinion there's been mixed results on the wisdom in their decision making but still a bike trail is a lot better than no cycle trail... it was lucky the money ws ever allocated, the finance minister wanted to veto it, but it was a pet project the prime minister wanted put in place because he had seen the economic benefit of the otago rail trail cycleway, just shame he doesnt have the same enthusiasm to our walking trails after cutting 50 million from doc's budget, looks like he stole from peter to pay paul anyway i'im going off topic

[Onestepmore]

Lol, all good Wayno. Thanks for the first-hand comments!
And thanks for adding the link to the site, which i had forgotten to do.

[Mark F]

Sounds rather like the NZ version of the Australian Bicentennial trail

[wayno]

yeah there were never any linked long distance trails. so one was finally pieced together.
would have been good if they put more information out about existing alternative tracks that people could use to go the length of the country, heres been a lot of debate about the path it should take in places.
in the north island it completely misses most of the mountain ranges that run down from the coromandel, south and from east cape and the ureweras, misses the ruahines and a lot of the tararuas..
in the south island it ends up runnign down the eastern side of the alps through the foothills. the terrain could get pretty monotonous for some considering theres better scenery not far away in a lot of places... for those wanting challenging and or the most scenic terrain you be advised to research alternate tracks

[under10kg]

My brother Aarn from aarnpacks.com did walk from the bottom of the South Island to the top of the South Island linking some of the best walking with some of the alternate tracks. I think in sections you need to use an ice axe and crampons to go over some of the high passes so this is not an walk like the Te Araroa.

[wayno]

te araroa does go over the odd alpine pass but only in the nelson lakes area. so thuth of that its mainly pretty low lying

[Gusto]

I have the guide book, my partner and I plan to complete it in school holidays over the next 3 years. We'll start in March next year. We're pretty excited for it, we don't know much about New Zealand, so it maybe handy if there was some alternative scenic and/or challenging routes published too. I guess funding affects the ability to market it.

[wayno]

You are here: Parks & recreation > Tracks & walks
There are extensive walking and mountain biking opportunities on conservation land including the Great Walks.
http://doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation ... and-walks/

pales in comparison to the great walks
http://doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation ... eat-walks/

[jacko1956]

Trailjournals.com has a few journals over the last couple of years. A couple are very good reading.
Like Wayno indicated it seems that it really isn't "complete" as a bushtrail and the general thrust I got from the journals was that it is an excellent walk but not one for purists.
It seems to be best done as a series of bushwalks with some "touristy" bits in between that you bus etc.
i.e. well worth doing but don't hesitate to adjust the path to suit yourself along the way.

[Gusto]

The owners of Z-Packs should be thru hiking this track at the moment. http://www.zpacks.com/about/te_araroa_gear.shtml That's good publicity for the trail.

They're not carrying much.

[wayno]

that depends on what they have to say about teh trail... its nothing like the american trails at all.....

[Strider]

The owners of Z-Packs should be thru hiking this track at the moment. http://www.zpacks.com/about/te_araroa_gear.shtml That's good publicity for the trail.

They're not carrying much.

Their first aid supplies in particular - ibuprofen. Nothing else.

[wayno]

The owners of Z-Packs should be thru hiking this track at the moment. http://www.zpacks.com/about/te_araroa_gear.shtml That's good publicity for the trail.

They're not carrying much.

Their first aid supplies in particular - ibuprofen. Nothing else.

http://andrewskurka.com/2012/stupid-lig ... or-better/

[wayno]

some ultralighters seem a bit obsessed that lighter is always better i read about one who tels everyone that god saved him and will save him again when he goes ultralight. he was freezing in an out of season snow storm without enough clothes, then teh storm ended and the sun came out....., he never thought for a minute that perhaps he should have brought more gear.... I mean hey why should you when you have the almight on your side?

[Strider]

some ultralighters seem a bit obsessed that lighter is always better i read about one who tels everyone that god saved him and will save him again when he goes ultralight. he was freezing in an out of season snow storm without enough clothes, then teh storm ended and the sun came out....., he never thought for a minute that perhaps he should have brought more gear.... I mean hey why should you when you have the almight on your side?

I guess its cheaper than buying a PLB

[wayno]

i'll watch out for them on the news.....

[Gusto]

I perplexed as to how they are able to do it with such little gear and be confident about their safety. 2.8kg for everything bar their food, fuel, water and day clothes.


My current pack alone weighs more than their base weight!!. It's 4kg and perfect for what I use it for (O.E. group leading). I'm hoping to downsize in 2013 (for personal trips) to an Aarn pack which will be about 2kg.

I wonder if they will be carrying more things, such as a PLB or Sat Phone. But just don't want to state that as they'd rather receive Kudos from other Ultra liters.

[wayno]

they usually arent equipped for cold weather, in the states you can usually expect warm weather every day in summer....
if they have really cold weather then often ultra lighters just have to camp until it warms up...

[wayno]

he's using the most lightweight materials in his gear, note his tent and groundsheet is around 600gm.....

[wayno]

also the ultralighters often dont take a change in warm clothing, they are pretty vulnerable to wet and cold.

[Gusto]

I'm beginning to do a bit of research into this walk at the moment. It's worth sharing that there is a rather active facebook group dedicated to this trail. https://www.facebook.com/groups/26638669574/

It may only be active at the moment as November is a popular time to start it if Through Hiking.

There is also a forum dedicated to this trail, but it's rather quiet.

[wayno]

theres usually some activity on the facebook site but yes more active in summer...
the forum has only recently been created, probably hasnt recruited many followers..

[Onestepmore]

I just came across their gear list on the zpacks site, and then found that someone had already linked it here.
It'll be interesting so see how they go - I hope they write a bit of a description about it afterwards

[wayno]

there is a google group for te araroa, teararoa@googlegroups.com

[wayno]

i take anything written by ultra lighters with a grain of salt, i think by default they will put up with more discomfort than most bush walkers.
packs with little if any padding , or no hip belt... minimal warm clothing if the weather is worse than expected... food chosen for weight above enjoyment, no extra creature comforts, they can write how they love their trips but how would a normal walker react carrying the gear they carry?
just like you have your converts to wearing running shoes everywhere, you have walkers who won't be happy going that light,
mind you i tramp in places where making gear mistakes kills people every year. i've made some mistakes myself that have left me with hypothermia and i wasnt going ultra light....
its summer but it can still snow in the south island and storms every bit as bad as winter storms can blow through, theres been a fair bit of spring snow falling,, ruapehu just had 20cm and it snowed on the tongariro crossing ..
its been a cold spring even in auckland, theres been a fair few storms, last summer was a fizzer with a lot of bad weather, there was frost on the routeburn when i did it at new years. ruggled to move my leg
one summer i came off the cook strait ferry after standing on deck, so cold in 80km winds i struggled to ..move my legs.

[mikethepike]

I'm not sure I'm particularly inspired to walk NZ N to S or v-v (and at 3000 km, the trail must twist about a fair bit) but wonder if NZ has any east-west coast to coast walks as in Britain. Arthurs Pass is the obvious route for South Island but it has a road and train. And it needs to be for walkers who aren't also mountaineers. Or is there some way to join existing tracks to make up the bulk of the distance for such a crossing. Any suggestions? Thanks.

With regards to the high proportion and number of overseas walkers in NZ, I recall local climbers saying how they would return to the mountains after the Aussies had gone home and left them in peace. Aussies seem to be a bit down the list of foreigners now!

[Strider]

I'm not sure I'm particularly inspired to walk NZ N to S or v-v (and at 3000 km, the trail must twist about a fair bit) but wonder if NZ has any east-west coast to coast walks as in Britain. Arthurs Pass is the obvious route for South Island but it has a road and train. And it needs to be for walkers who aren't also mountaineers. Or is there some way to join existing tracks to make up the bulk of the distance for such a crossing. Any suggestions?

Heaphy Track?

[wayno]

its because so many aussie combers come to nz, its a good close option for them.

in the south island there arent any east west walking tracks once you're out of the mountains and into farmland.

in the north island it would be about sticking together preexisting tracks and probably some off track work trying to go east west , depends where you want to do it since the width of the island varies a lot and the terrain and the quality and number of tracks in various areas.
again once you're out of the moutains there isnt much int eh way of walking tracks, nothing that links east west.. study topomap.co.nz to find the tracks..
as it is te araroa can be hard to find in places.

[mikethepike]

Thanks Strider and wayno for those suggestions. It's interesting how the long walks in Britain are mainly on/across farmland but in NZ such countryside isn't of much interest to walkers. Maybe I should go to North Island for such a quest but it's not so far been in my sights although I've always been curious about visiting Waikikamukau (Whykickamoocow). But I've just googled it only to discove that it's the NZ equivalent to our Woop Woop. I swear that years ago I first became aware of the 'town' when I saw the name on a serious map.