Distance: 14km. Total: 1159. Smell facto: 2/10. Most of today was spent enjoying this kind of view, now you can enjoy it to. The Turner.
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Distance = 0km Total = Smell Factor = 0/10
After yesterday's exploits we were not in a hurry to do too much this morning. I met Tom in the cafe down the road for some very mediocre breakfast. Not knowing our plans we packed up and cheekily headed off without paying for our camp spot. It was a DOC run holiday park and having spent $90 on a hut pass we didn't feel so bad. All four of us went to the chateau (rather fancy but also well past its best) for lunch. Lunch was great and we soaked up wifi and power. All feeling much more refreshed we decided we would go and explore the nearby waterfalls. Our consciences got the better of us so we went back to the holiday park and paid to stay another night, we pitched up in exactly the same spot and headed off. Without our bags we bounded along until we came to our first falls. It was only about 15ft height but the water was naturally funnelled just as it went over creating a surprisingly thunderous sound. We stopped here for a while messing around by the crystal clear water. We carried on a little further to see what we could find and it wasn't long before we struck gold. Ice melt from Mt Raupehu roared over the 40ft edge down into a large natural pool. It was too good to miss, so although the water was bitterly cold we clambered around the rocks shirtless until we were behind the falls. I took a quick and very refreshingly cold shower under this beautiful waterfall, what an amazing experience. Feeling revitalised we dried off in the sun before heading back to camp. We passed the evening looking at photos from the previous few days and playing cards. The Turner Distance = 28km Total = 1,145km Smell Factor = 8/10 We woke at 5:30 and it was freezing cold so we quickly ate breakfast with the morning sun beginning to light up the intimidating summits behind our camp spot. We were packed up and ready for the big day ahead, hitting the road at 7:05. The car park was busy with people being loaded onto busses so they could be taken round to the start of the crossing. We would be crossing backwards, because the TA never takes the easy option, and no one followed us but we did receive plenty of strange looks. The start was nice and gentle and due to its popularity the track was very well maintained. The climb got considerably steeper as we broke out above the tree line. As we emerged out of the woodland the views were amazing. The mountains loomed above us even though we were already quite high. Plumes of sulphur were being spewed out in brilliant white towers of smoke. The eggy sulphur smell filled the air but it only added to the wonder of the alien landscape, it also helped to cover our own hikers smell. The climb intensified after this, it was still a very good track which helped but the weight of our packs counter balanced this. The views continued to amaze and the eggy smell came and went dependent upon the breeze. We reached the first hut of the day nearly an hour ahead of the estimated time on the sign and so we rewarded ourselves with a hot chocolate. The hut had not been used since the last major eruption when it sustained considerable damage. The decking was still in one piece though and we enjoyed our hot chocolate and took in the spectacular view back down the valley and across the lake. At this point we started to meet those who had started the crossing at the other end. They passed us in their hundreds, each saying hello. This became really rather tiresome after a while, especially when going up hill and with the weight of our packs. It was pleasant to see people though, some very under prepared for such a crossing, and we were frequently asked why we were going the wrong way and with such large, heavy backpacks. We continued to climb so much so that a tiny part of the track still had some snow on it. We were now in the clouds, the temperature plummeted and the wind picked up. The view back down the mountain disappeared adding even more to the mystical, other worldly feel. We reached the first crater and the blue lake. The rolling cloud cleared just enough for us to see this amazing volcanic lake. We wandered on to the emerald lakes and rested here for a while whilst we had our lunch. The visibility came and went but people just kept appearing through the cloud. The steepest climb of the day followed, the weight of our bags really didn't help with the poor traction of the lose scree under foot. This climb took us to the heights point of the trail so far (over 1,800 meters above sea level). After catching our breath and playing some 'Rocky' as we reached the summit a short descent took us into the main volcanic crater. The landscape was like something out of a sci-fi movie, apart from gravity weighing us down we could have easily been on another planet. We decided against attempting to summit Mt Ngauruhoe (Mt Doom) due to the weather and the weight of our bags. Tom and I declaring that we would conquer the summit on our way back through New Zealand when we would be able to do it without our entire lives on our backs, the precious summit will be ours!!! The view cleared as we descended and it was as spectacular, if not more so, than the climb had been. We headed off the main crossing, this track was nowhere as well maintained. This coupled with fatigue setting in meant our pace dropped. We stopped to cook and eat dinner on a bridge, like some sort of middle earth trolls, so we would have enough energy to reach our end goal and the potential comfort of Whakapapa village. After 13 and half hours of hiking we reached the village around 8:30. Not knowing where to camp we headed for a ski hotel. This hotel just happened to have a bar, fancy that, and so we celebrated our long day and hard effort with a beer each, a Coke each, and a massive bowl of chips each. We eventually dragged ourselves out the comfortable chairs and found the campsite around 10 ish. We managed to set our tents up in a small free patch and all made the most of the hot showers, separately! Feeling clean, exhausted, and proud of our efforts I crawled into my little castle and slipped into bed. What an amazing day. The Turner.
Distance: 24km, 23km, 19km. Total: 1117km. Smell Factor: 5/10.
As we left the camp we begun vearing south- east towards the North Island's volanic heart; the Tongario National park. The Tongario croasing is hailed as one of New Zealand's 10 great walks and represents one of the more dramatic terrain tranisions we will encounter on the trail. As such, the next few days would be a gradual ascent to the base of the crossing via the forested 42 traverse. The traverse was steep in parts and very undulating; diving into valleys and through various rivers. It was a wide semi-maintained track good enough for quad bikes. Such conditions allow good progress and we were only slowed by deeper river crossings. Towards the later part of the day the forest path opened up in front and we were greeted with the not so distant peaks of Mt Ngauruhoe (Mount doom) and Mt Ruapehu. The following day the snowy peaks became ever closer and our excitment grew. We camped at the base in a grassy layby in prime position for our crossing. After a minor mishap Luke & I jogged back down the road to retrieve drinkable water. We had not realised the mineral content in the stream was unsafe. We got lucky and managed to fill our reserves only 3km down the road with a very cheery local and hitched back with some lost swiss fellas. Problem solved, we hit the hey (seperately). The Hobbit. Distance: 0km Days off. Total: 1051km. Smell factor: 0/10.
Having completed one third of the walk you would think we were camping professionals at this point. We can certainly say that we've learnt a huge amount. Nonetheless, aspects of our new found knowledge are immensely boring. You definitely dont want to know about how we cleverly pack our bags to ensure perfect weight distribution and expert water replusion whilst having everything important to hand in an instant. No, those details are not interesting. What is interesting to us is how normal this camping business has become. The other wet night on the timber trail I crawed into my tent, wriggled into my sleeping bag and read my book via my phone. The weather was lashing down around me but I had that warm fuzzy feeling you get after a day in the cold. My 4 cuben fibre walls are all I needed to feel comfortable. Now, don't get me wrong, sometimes we would kill to have the comforts of home. It would be idilic to casually walk downstairs, eat toast and eggs whilst lounging on the sofa watching films. This must sound rather ridiculus but we can spend many walking hours thinking how easy and nice home is. Instead, packing, cooking and preparing for a days walk on the trail takes 2 hours. Everything we do requires thought and time when you lack the ease of modern comforts. I can tell you houses are wonderfully perfected watertight creations. Nonetheless, trail life is the norm now. We have adapted and evolved to manage our new routines and environments. Everyday we sleep somewhere new and unexpected. Every process is now tried and tested. Continual tweaks refine these processes further. In turn, these systems enhance the experience and help eradicate the difficulties. Although I babble about craving home comforts I must remind you all that the trip is shaping up to be bloody briliant. Every week offers an array of new experiences and challenges. We are lucky enough to already have numerous memories to cherish and share. Despite this, I cannot yet say living out of a bag is not someting I would like to continually do. Travel and experience yes, but not to this extreme. We have met some hikers that have been going from trail to trail for 10 years; always on the move living in tents on a tight budget. Credit to them; the freedom of hiking and unpredicability of everyday is certainly exciting. However, I think I speak for both us when I say this doesn't interest us for such a lenght of time. We are extremly grateful to have such wonderful adventures but travel experiences don't have to be quite that raw for quite that long. I certainly couldnt be doing without normal food for so long. I need yorkshire puddings back in my life. Ultimately though, the challenge and personal achievement is what drives us. The walk is pushing our physical and mental limits to an extent we didnt expect. It has been completely out of our comfort zone. Each day is generally a cocktail of contradictory emotions cursing our self inflicted goal whilst similutaesly reveling in our achicement. What we remind ourselves is if we can walk 1000km we can walk another 2000km, if we can walk the entire lenght of a country then we can surely set our minds to anything. We may struggle or stumble along the way but that is all part of the challenge. I only hope there will be a platter of yorkshire puddings and gravy waiting when I return home. Distance = 16, 34, 34. Total = 1051km. Smell Factor = 9/10
The mosquitos frequently woke me up through the night, but annoying as this was it did mean I was able to briefly enjoy the beauty of the clear night sky. I devised a pretty good bug net using my hat and buff so I did manage to get some sleep. The beginning of the track was very well kept and pretty flat which allowed us to fully enjoy the incredible alpine forest around us. Being at a fairly high altitude meant that the forest was covered in moss, making it all that little bit more magical. We took our time at this section and Emma helped to point out the many birds flying through the canopy. The gradient increased but the track was still good under foot until we turned off to head for the summit. It was back to scrambling over tree roots and dodging knee deep mud until we broke through above the tree line. We had been in the forest for a few hours and in that time the blue skies had been replaced with thick cloud, and we were in one of those clouds. We reached the summit, our highest point on the trip so far at 1,175 meter above sea level. On a good day we could see lake Taupo and even the volcanic summits of Ngauruhoe (Mt Doom) and Ruapehu in the distance. It was not a good day though so we couldn't see 20 metelrs in front of us, it was annoying to miss out on yet another summits view but such is life and we have come to realise that this trail is very rarely fair to its followers. The temperature plummeted at this altitude, helped by the strengthening of the wind, and so we didn't spend long at the summit. The descent was steep and muddy, like all the other forests. We made our way to the 'Bog Inn' hut and reached our destination in the mid afternoon. To our delight the hut had a small wood burner and so Tom went straight to work on getting it going, the hobbit was in his element. There were only four bunks and there was another TA hiker already at the hut. The hobbit and I earned our bunk by getting the fire going and keeping it going through the afternoon and evening. We collected wood from around the hut and although it was all damp we managed to get the fire hot enough to still burn the wet logs. Another TA hiker joined us late in the evening and due to the weather and our awesome fire he decided to sleep on the floor. The six of us talked and laughed into the evening in this very rickety, old, shabby but very cosy four bed hut half way up a hill in the middle of nowhere. The day that followed was possibly the worst of the trip so far. It was still raining when we woke but thankfully due to our great fire making skills most of our clothes were dry. The rain was relentless throughout the day and it didn't take long for absolutely everything to be saturated. The awesome suspension bridges dotted along the trail briefly brightened our spirits and we took great delight in bouncing on them to exacerbate Harry's dislike of heights, as all good friends would. The rain always put pay to this and quickly dampened our spirits, quite literally. Around mid day we passed the 1,000 kilometre mark. We celebrated as all full grown adults would with high fives all round and a sip of crap whisky from the hip flask. Passing the thousand k mark should have been much more of a momentous occasion, walking a million meters in just under two months is not something many people do, but the weather and our lack of food put pay to this. Food had been a big issue all week and every hiker we spoke to was having a similar problem. We had heard about hikers hunger but this was next level. We could eat endlessly and still not be full, we were constantly hungry even though we had sufficient supplies. Every conversation turned to food and we constantly thought about food, real food not this light weight hikers stuff. Food is a big part of both our lives but never more so than today. This coupled with the incessant rain really affected our mood. We trudged on for hours until we found a small spot we could fit all three tents on. Everything was cold and wet, even my sleeping clothes were slightly damp. I was in a foul mood and after eating dinner sat out in the pouring rain it wasn't long before I was asleep. I woke to even more rain and I also discovered my tent had let in a small trickle of water through the night so everything in my tent was nearly as wet as the stuff outside my tent. £400 for a stupid bag for life which didn't even complete its most basic of jobs! Tom was in the same boat, separate tents though. We ate breakfast in silence and packed up all our wet stuff into our wet bags, put on wet clothes, wet boots, and hit the trail once again in the rain. I was so close to braking point that I even took the guys up on the offer of coffee during our first break. It may have been the coffee but it was more likely the sunshine breaking through which lifted my spirits. It's crazy what a bit of sun and caffeine can do for someone close to their limit. The trail continued to be well maintained and the suspension bridges still delighted us, apart from Harry. We all turned our bags into walking washing lines so we could dry as many clothes as possible. We listened to music to keep our pace up so that we would make it out of the forest that day. It was another long day, at the end of a long day and the final push to reach the nearby village of Ongarue was a tough one. Our aim was to get to Taumaranui so we could stay in a cabin. This aim was quickly dashed when we called a shuttle company and they quoted us a price of $300 to take us 25 kilometres (10 minutes at most by car), what the frig New Zealand!?! The chap running the local store (not really a store but it did sell Coke) told us we could catch the school bus in the morning for $5 each. He pointed us to a patch of grass to camp on near the public toilets. We all enjoyed our well earned cokes before pitching up. Knowing we could resupply tomorrow was amazing and we all ate pretty much everything we had in our bags for dinner. Food, beds, showers, and shelter would be ours tomorrow so one more night in the tent was fine, especially as the rain had stopped. Even the ground shaking train line only a few meters from our beds couldn't bring us down. The Turner. Besides the day being our biggest walking day and Luke sleeping on the unoccupied Department of Conservation HQ fancy porch, the walking was uneventful. So, instead, we have hair growth updates for you:
Facial hair: The Turner: Vagely manly. Not Castaway Tom Hanks by any means but an significant evolution from Woody Tom Hanks. Th Hobbit: Pretty hopeless but some improvement. If you squint you may see it. Head hair: The Turner: Looks very normal but with stylised designer blond streaks (possibly grey). The Hobbit: Untameable. I constantly need to wear my hat to control/hide it. Im a bit scared of it. Give it time, we may still miraculously turn into man bunned, long bearded hiking hipsters. The Hobbit. Distance: 17km. Total: 932km. Smell factor: 5/10.
I was rather careless today with the metholated sprits and briefly set fire to my foot... Luckily, there was a river right next to me which I scrambled into. The day wasnt particulary pleasant after that. It blistered slightly and warmed a fair bit in my boot. The blazing hot sun and crazy terrain didn't help matters. Since then, we have switched to cooking on gas. The Hobbit. We had an unproductive day off relaxing in the sun on a river shoal bank. Sorry no blogging was achieved.
Distance = 17km. Total = 912km. Smell Factor = 0/10
For only the second time on the trail we decided to be tourists for the morning and visit the Waitomo glow worm caves. Although it wasn't cheap it was well worth the visit. The initial cave system was impressive enough, with gigantic stalactites and stalagmites all around. We ventured further down into the cave and as it became darker the glow worms became visible. We were herded into boats and slowly we made our way into the complete darkness. The glow worms were incredible, they transformed the cave ceiling into the most brilliant blanket of stars. They were on almost every surface above the waterline and in the darkness and silence it was magical. We filled up at the cafe again before heading back to the trail. The sun was at full blaze, this, coupled with some steep climbs, meant it was tough going. The trail took some very odd directions and there was rather a lot of cursing along the way. We were in good spirits though as we made our way into Te Kuiti. We hadn't worked out a place to stay but we did find a takeaway so we enjoyed some very mediocre Chinese whilst coming up with a plan. The plan was to resupply and then walk a couple of kilometres out of town to find a decent free camp spot. The plan didn't last long as we were offered a place to stay by a lovely Maori as Tom and I were at the check out. All four of us, our packs, 6 days worth of food each, and Middy squeezed into her car and we made our way to her house. Middy had a spare room for Harry and Emma, whilst Tom and I set up our pads on the living room floor, yes technically the same room but separate pads! We talked late into the night, discussing the similarities and differences between our cultures. A fantastically well informed and welcoming host, what more could you ask for. I guess fortune favours those who take ages at the checkout. The Turner |
Blog updated until Day 93.
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