Hiking the Te Araroa alone as a female?
Isis Marina
I am an American working in Sweden, and my job ends next September/
October and I want to start planning for my next adventure.
I am curious, what is the level of danger is hiking the Te Araroa
alone as a female- both as far as terrain goes and strangers are
concerned?
I also have another number of questions as far as the budget and the
legality of being in New Zealand, but perhaps I should save those for
another topic?
Thank you!
Isis
toek
Some considerations from a very big and ugly man. I hiked the north-
island alone. Started the south alone and ended hiking with Yeti.
- Hiking alone is always more risky then hiking with somebody.
- I did not see any (day, section or thru-) hikers of the 1600 KM of the
North-island after 90 mile beach....!
- On the north-island you will have big road walks. There will be cars
and you will attack attention, female or mail. I had in NZ no bad
experiences. Every-body was very nice (not to-nice).
maybe some basic things to avoid troubles:
- Don't walk in the dark.
- Don't camp in sight of a road.
- On the south-island there are less roads. But here you will go into
very remote areas. If you are intending to go alone conceder to take a
PLB with you. The ridgemond range (mount rintel) are very remote.
- people you meet in the remote areas will give a "lone female hiker" no
troubles at all, i think. I have met several solo hiking woman and they
did not tell me other wise.
- You must be very lucky to meet other hikers on the trail. On the
trails in the U$A there are always other hikers behind you ... in NZ it
can take weeks before an other is coming through. (last year there were
only 4 hikers doing all the way ....!) on parts there are only Araroa
hikers. Alone will be ALONE!!!!
- On the south island the Alpine parts are exposed and can be hard when
the weather turns bad. You must feel comfortable in that alone, it will
happen.
- The route can be hard to find and not strait forward. You have to be
creative .. The trail is new and today's hikers are the pioneers, she is
NOT (yet) WARN-IN.
- For your resupply you will have to hitch with cars to get into
"something". I don't think you can avoid that with careful planning.
ToeK
Pathfinder
weekend hikers after almost 2 weeks of walking, and rarely shared a
hut even in popular areas of the South island. You will have to camp
in various fields etc on the North Island...I got pretty good at
hopping barbed wire and electric fences. In theory you are supposed to
ask permission of farmers, but it's hard to find the farmhouse
sometimes. As an American living in New Zealand, it seems much safer
here that the US. I would rate it very similar to Sweden as far as a
woman's safety levels are concerned. People in the North would all
wave and often offer rides, could be hard to turn down when faced with
multiple days of roadwalking. There are no creatures that will attack
you other than mosquitoes and sandflies, though the plantlife is very
aggressive (think jungle at times), there is no poison oak or poison
ivy to deal with either.
Unlike some of my other long distance hikes, I did not have the time
to plan this one in advance (I had food drops on the AT and PCT), so
had to rely on shops along the way...there is very little selection in
some of them, can be pricey, and only one company here sells freeze
dried and it is quite expensive. I probably spent about 3 thousand NZ
including food, accommodation, kayak rental, and flight back to
Auckland for my 85 day walk. I only had to hitch-hike about four times
on the trip. I carried up to 10 days worth of food through a few
sections, but generally didn't need to carry more than a week's worth.
Legality wise, it is easy to get a 3 month visa to visit (actually,
you don't even need a visa from the US for that time), but if you are
young enough (under 30) then the following would allow you to stay for
a year and work too;
http://www.immigration.govt.nz/migrant/stream/work/workingholiday/unitedstatesofamericaworkingholidayscheme.htm
Terrain-wise I carried a SPOT through part of the South Island. This
gave my wife and friends a map location via satellite. If I were to
do it again, I probably would go for a PLB for the South Island. One
hiker disappeared from the trail last year (South Island) and has
never been found. The two rivers on the South Island can be deadly,
but I found safer ways to cross both (I'll be posting these at some
point). The trail is definitely remote, and in a few areas you are
truly going cross country with no trail at all. A GPS is very highly
recommended, though even with that it isn't always easy.
Hope I'm not too discouraging. It is truly beautiful in many places.
If I were to do it again, I might only do the South Island, as there
was much more established trail there. I would definitely chose an
alternate route from the official trail in a number of places such as
taking the kayak from Timarunui to Whanganui instead of the Tongariro
crossing, and as far as I know over the past few years, everybody but
me skipped the section through Shania Twain's property above
Queenstown (there's a much shorter and more logical route across the
Cascade Saddle that is more spectacular and skips out on a bunch of
road walking). If you have done other long walks (ie PCT, CDT, AT
etc.) then you will be better prepared for this one. There are lots
of shorter trips of a week or so in both islands that could be
stitched together. NZ is a beautiful place to hike.
Cheers, Roland