Tramping and Hiking in New Zealand

My name is Greg and recently I spent about three months hiking in New Zealand. I walked many interesting, beautiful and challenging tracks. Gradually starting with easy one-day walks, I ended up with doing demanding seven to ten-day hikes.

During this time I accumulated a fair amount of experience in New Zealand hiking. I am saying “New Zealand hiking” and not hiking in general because this experience differs from my previous hiking experience, which I acquired in Caucasus, European Alps and Middle East. In this article I would like to share my hiking experience in New Zealand.

Easy does it

Let’s start with easy walks. New Zealand has many relatively short walks that take anywhere from twenty minutes to five-six hours. Most of these walks are nice, well-marked and well-formed tracks. The only disadvantage of such walks is that they won’t take you far from civilization and crowd, but you will still be able to see some of the beautiful places New Zealand has to offer.

Great Walks

One more category of walks that I consider to be easy is New Zealand’s Great Walks. For those who are not familiar with them, there are eight tramping tracks (and one river journey) in New Zealand that are classified as Great Walks. Great Walks are New Zealand’s most popular tramping tracks mostly due to the magnificence and variety of the scenery they offer. The length of these walks ranges from 36 kilometers (22.4 miles, 3 days) to 82 kilometers (60 miles, 5 days). I didn’t count here the Whanganui Journey, which is a river paddle (144km, 5 days). Since Great Walks are intended for the majority of people with various fitness levels they are all relatively easy tramping tracks, and anyone with reasonable fitness level can walk them. But here I also should mention that due to their beauty and popularity, Great Walks are more crowded than other tramping tracks, and some of them even require advance booking.

Getting adventurous

As I accumulated my New Zealand tramping experience I started to go for more difficult walks graded “moderate” or “demanding”. These tracks are much less crowded, but not less beautiful, interesting and fulfilling. They require a higher fitness level and more hiking experience. Some of them involve river crossings and going over high mountain passes. The tracks are not well formed or graded and sometimes there is no track at all – just marking poles that you have to follow, which requires some navigational skills. All this makes a tramp much more difficult but also much more interesting and challenging.
After describing the tramps in general, I would like to share some of the tips that I learned from my New Zealand’s tramping experience.

Water

Water issue is one of the most important during tramping. While humans can survive without a food for long periods of time, they can’t do that without water. You should always have enough water with you. When tramping from hut to hut, people often rely on the fact that they will be able to refill their water supply in the hut. But consider the fact that the water supply in the hut comes from rain (huts have a system which collects rainwater from the roof into tanks), and if there was long dry period, there might not be any water left. By saying “long dry period” I mean a period longer than two or three days! This was the case when I was doing the Northwest circuit on Stewart Island. During my tramp there I had a three day period without rain, and when I arrived at East Ruggedy Hut there was no water left in the tanks. Luckily there was a stream near the hut and I could take water from there using my water filter. I always take my water filter with me when I go for long and difficult tramps. Since Giardia was discovered in New Zealand’s streams, rivers and lakes, it is not safe to drink water from them. The Giardia risk is lower in the highlands where streams are strong and come directly from the mountain snow. You can also boil water for at least three minutes to make it safe, but this is not very practical since you have a limited fuel supply for your stove.



Tramping equipment

Backpack. There is a lot of information available about different backpacks and how to choose them, so I won’t talk about it here. The one thing that is very important is that it should weigh as little as possible! It is difficult to enjoy tramping if you take too much stuff with you.
Trekking poles. These are things I would never leave at home! Trekking poles will help you in many different ways. First of all they reduce the pressure on your knees by approximately 20%. They will also help your balance on different terrain types. When going uphill make them a little shorter and when going downhill make them a little longer and this way you’ll feel comfortable climbing and descending with a backpack on your back. When you need to cross a stream you can use them for balancing yourself while hopping between boulders.
Waterproof gear. If you go on a long tramp, chances are that at least one (and probably more) of your tramping days will be rainy. From my experience it is almost impossible to stay dry when walking in rain all day. But it’s much more important that your stuff remains dry. For that I recommend using backpack liners. A pack liner is a big plastic bag that you put inside your backpack when it is empty, and then you put all your gear inside this bag. This way your gear should remain dry in all weather conditions.

I hope this information will help those of you who plan to tramp in New Zealand. I would like to add that in my opinion New Zealand’s nature is one of the ecologically cleanest and most impressive in the world, and tramping there was a very interesting and uplifting experience for me. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Written by Greg Brave. (www.nztramping.com)