Hiking adventures in New Zealand
Hiking adventures in New Zealand
The Nydia Track in the Marlborough Sounds is a beautiful 27Km tramping and mountain biking track stretching from Duncan Bay at the end of Tennyson inlet to Kaiuma Bay Road, in the Pelorous Sound. We walked 19Km of the track from Duncan Bay to the Nydia Lodge DoC accommodation on a winter weekend, at a very leisurely pace. DoC times recommend 6 hours to the lodge, but we made it in around 5 hours including plenty of stops for...
Located across the Kahurangi National Park in New Zealand's upper South island, the Heaphy Track spans the Nelson/Tasman and West Coast districts. It is one of New Zealand's 10 'great walks', which DoC describe as their 'premier' tracks. Generally these tracks are easy to follow and well graded, and take you through some of the most spectacular wilderness scenery New Zealand has to offer.
Note that on the great walks you must pre-book your accommodation, and...
Christmas Day on Te Araroa trail 🙂🌲 We got up at 4am as Flo wanted to call his family in Europe on their Christmas Eve when we got a signal at the top of the mountain. We were ready to leave Top Wairoa hut just as it got light at 5.15am.
We began the day with an 800m (2600 ft) climb from Top Wairoa hut up Mt Ellis 1615m (5300 ft). It started with rock-hopping the large...
This week's adventure brought me back onto Te Araroa Trail, nine months after I left it. If you followed my Te Araroa trail journey over the 2017/18 season you'll remember that I skipped the Richmond ranges twice due to bad weather and, if I'm honest a case of the heebie jeebies.
Knowing it would be one of the most difficult parts of the trail, with high mountains over 1500m, big drops, some scrambling and technical...
Mount Taranaki (Mount Egmont) is a beautiful dormant cone volcano found on the Western tip of New Zealand's North island. It is apparently one of the most perfectly symmetrical cone volcanoes in the world and the summit reaches 2,518m (8,261ft) in elevation. What I didn't know until recently, was that it was used in the movie 'The Last Samurai' because of its resemblance to Mount Fuji.
There was still a fair bit of snow on the summit, so this time,...
This morning the weather gave us a window of opportunity to get off the mountain. The forecast was fine with lighter winds until around 11am, before more gales and thunder storms were due to set in. We took the chance and woke at 5.30am for a 6.30 start. After surprisingly decent sleep and a museli bar breakfast, we headed off across the Rangipo Desert towards the Waihohonu hut.
We felt pretty good as...