Woke up this morning dreading what stood before me. A nearly 1km climb. That’s not climbing for 1km. No. I’m 1km higher in elevation than when I started this morning. Off right at 7am to try to beat the sun as much as we could. The climb is fully exposed with zero shade and zero…

Today was a short day. The trail was part road walk but mostly gravel bike trail all the way. We coasted along the edge of the lake for a while, taking in some magnificent views before heading inland along a river. After a good while along the river we came across a campground and hung…

Originally we were shooting just for the big campground on the lake for tonight and we were going to walk in tomorrow, but a couple of days ago we met Jamie and Simon, a couple of guys from Dunedin who were hiking the track for the weekend who offered to give us a ride into…

2 hills today. 2 big hills. We originally had planned on going through to Fern Burn Hut, but decided after yesterday that a short day would be nice. We could do Fern Burn and the campground the next day and have plenty of time. So off we went. The day started with a really huge…

Today’s official route has us going over Big Hill. As you can imagine, it’s a pretty big hill. It also has us going up over Roses Pass. Neat. Screw that. On the map there’s a nice river and a trail that runs along next to it. No hills. Let’s do that! In the day or…

Despite all of us heading to the same place tonight we were almost all in different hostels or even towns in the morning so rather than try to coordinate any morning meet up we just said we’d see each other at camp and whoever gets there first check us in. Chris was already in Frankton…

Today was just a short day. Given how I’ve been doing vs the DOC time estimates for sections, the 3-4 hours this section was meant to be I wanted to plan for 5. So for the past several days I’ve been stressing over this day. I have a shuttle picking me up at 10am and…

Both of these days were super super super hot. I met a couple of guys at Boundary Hut and and walked with them on the second day. These days were super hard too. So many times I quit. In Te Anau, the guys I’d met before convinced me to do this stretch in 4 days,…

Woke up early this morning and hit the road. I had to get to the edge of town and then start hitchhiking to get me out to the trail. Traffic was pretty light so it took a while but after about 20 or 30 minutes a guy picked me up and off I went! Being…

Today was supposed to be easy. Long stretch through tussock followed by a steep climb followed by a gravel road walk followed by sticking my thumb out and hoping for the best. Well. It was a long walk through tussock. But the steep climb was more of a compete and utter disaster of a trail…