Hiking adventures in New Zealand
Hiking adventures in New Zealand
New Zealand – Te Araroa Trail
Today is my final day on Te Araroa Trail!! We all woke around 6.30am this morning. Laura was off first, heading NOBO up to Stag Saddle. The morning was fresh but not too cold, and thankfully it wasn't raining! Phil, Mike and I headed out around 8am. My last day on Te Araroa Trail started pretty easily walking down the Camp Stream river valley, which meant wet feet within 10 minutes..sigh..
We turned into Coal Stream river valley and went up and over the hills to then walked parallel with...
I had a great night sleep and woke up bright & breezy at 6am. We got going at 7.30am and immediately had a stream crossing - wet feet again! We launched into a 650m climb straight away up to the Bullock Bow Saddle, which took 1.5 hrs to climb up to 1682m elevation. On the way up we saw a 'tahr'. This is a large Himalayan goat-like animal which lives in the New Zealand mountains. It was on the ridge line for some time checking us out, and ran away when we approached.
Over the saddle...
I spent the first couple of hours after lights out last night, sleeping on the sofa in front of the beautiful open fire in the lounge - which was lovely. I carted myself to bed around midnight. In the morning we woke around 6.45am and all had spare food, so we ate big breakfasts including another Mochatella (mocha with a spoonful of Nutella in it) yum!
We started our walk at 8am. We had 2kms to walk to the road end where we'd start TA again, to the South side of the Rangitata river. This...
We woke up today at 6.15am. It was really cold this morning!! We enjoyed a sachet of mocha coffee with breakfast which I added a huge spoonful of Nutella to. Having put on our wet shoes and socks from yesterday we all got on trail at 7.20am and immediately got stuck into the first of around 40 river crossings upstream into Round Hill Creek.
Having done just three of these crossings our legs and feet became so numb with cold that we couldn't feel them any more. It was a stinging cold that...
We got up at 5am for a quick brekkie, and we left the Blue pub at 5.45am to get the school bus to the trail head up Glenrock Road at 6am. It was raining when we woke and I wasn't keen to go but the boys weren't having any of it, and casually ignored my protests. We got to the bus stop and found out that the bus left at 7, so we went for a hot chocolate.
When we got back to the bus stop there were 7 other Te Araroa trail hikers waiting too. The bus took 30 mins to reach our destination - a...
I had probably the best night's sleep I've ever had in a hut last night! Even though we had about 15 people, there were no snorers and no mice!! Everyone got up around 6.45am and Mike, Phil and I left around 8am.
Today was another day of beech forest and walking down the Harper river valley. The trail notes mentioned that we could stay on the true left of the river for most of the way, only crossing at the end - but the path ended on the left within 30 mins of us starting. This meant we...