Legs and Borders

Navigating through the last long section of Te Araroa sobo continued. After a steady climb from the Lower Wairaki Hut, I've reached the last scenic ridge walk on TA. The weather was perfect for the procedure. On my way down I've met a group of Northbounders and got an intel about upcoming day - it was mainly farmland, the trail run on the 4wd road. I've reached the campsite on the other side of the hill at 9 am, here the easier track begun. Road was covered with animal excrements and.. corpses. I've never seen so many dead sheep in my life, it was a little bit disturbing. They all seemed to be dying by the fence line next to which the trail was running.  There was one shallow river crossing in this section, I had to do another one after I've followed the road too far and missed a turning point. Linton Farm involved a lot of redirections, owners did not want TA hikers to walk through certain points and the trail was twisting and tu...

Gas station was opening at 7am and I made sure I'm there exactly at that time to have a coffee before hitching back to trail. It wasn't easy to catch a ride though, people were still half asleep and the rising sun was hitting directly front windows of passing cars. I got joined by a couple from Christchurch going back to trail as well. They decided to wait on the side until I get out. After 45 minutes a car stopped and a bubbly lady jumped out of it asking where I wanted to go. I explained best I could and asked her if she would have enough space for two more people. I waved at the couple and shortly after we were on our way to the trail. It turned out that the lady worked for Simply New Zealand and I met her yesterday at the shop asking for Paua shells. She and her husband were going to do shopping in the other town as they Te Anau markets too expansive. Ride finished after 15 minutes and we started walking. I had a short conversatio...

Since I was running on schedule and the weather was supposed to be bad today I decided to take a day off. It was just a regular eat, sleep and walk around town kind of day. I decided to buy five days of resupply at the Fresh Choice for the next leg of TA, skip the upcoming town and go straight to Riverton. I went with cold soaked porridge for breakfast, peanut butter and nutella wraps (I stole the idea from Atsushi) premade and packed in separate ziplock bags for lunch and noodles with chicken and peas for dinner. Snack selection were nut bars, trailmix and Whittaker's chocolates. I threw few boiled eggs, dried apple slices and Oreos to the mix. I had a coffee at the gas station (they always have best and cheapest coffee), then had an amazing venison and plum sauce pie at the Miles Better Pies and bought new pair of undies as my old ones got too big (or I got too thin) and they were sliding off my arse as I wal...

Today I was mainly trying to run away from rain through an obstacle course of blow down trees. It was raining all night but my sturdy MSR tent took it really well and most of everything was dry in the morning. It stopped at 7am and despite the weather forecast announcing thunderstorms the sky was looking fairly clear. It was still 30 miles before I could get a hitchhike to town (or so I though at the time) so I was trying to get as far as I could to have a longer day off tomorrow. Initially trail was wet but easygoing, running along a four wheel drive. Eventually it went over a bridge to the other side of the lake and into the forest, here the issues begun. Despite the visible effort of Department of Conservation to keep it tidy, path was full of blow down trees and it looked more like a obstacle course from ninja warrior than a trail. After 5 kilometres of it I was done and took an alternate path running alongside the gravel road on the other side o...

"I couldn't find a campsite so I ended up bush bashing around this lake until 10pm with my headlight on until I found a flat meadow I could camp on. And that's how I've spend my 71st birthday" Mark Long day with wet feet. Trail from the parking to the Greenstone Hut was pristine, I must have met over twenty people that were sleeping in the hut last night walking back to their cars. One of them was Quadzilla, calendar year triple crowner. I knew he was doing the TA and was hoping to see him along the way. He and few other PCT hikers were heading North. It turned out that I've met the girl Quadzilla was hiking with on the PCT two years ago, we were both part of a trail magic around Hiker Town. Her trail name was Marvel. Later on her friends told me that she actually changed her legal name to it. That was some serious, American style commitment right there. After the Greenstone Hut trail quality went drastically down for the next 10 miles. Trail was o...