September to November, 2024
I spent the spring of 2024 cycling across the North Island of New Zealand (NZ).
I’d spent most of the previous winter working as the assistant manager at a shoe store in Nelson. I’d never worked in management anywhere and the store sold almost exclusively women’s shoes. Needless to say, I was a little out of my element there. I could likely write an entire post on this job alone, but that will have to wait. By the time spring rolled around, I was ready to get moving again.
Early into my stint at the shoe store, I decided I wanted to hike Te Araroa (TA) the following summer; the TA is a 3000 km long trail that traverses the length of NZ. My work was set to finish in the beginning of September and I wasn’t planning to start hiking until early December; so, I had a few months to kill and I knew I wanted to see the North Island. I’d been in NZ for 9 months and had spent all of that time on the South Island.
I had a bit of a decision to make about my mode of transportation for the North Island. Before I could decide, I had to figure out what my goals were for the North Island. In my head, I really just wanted to hike as much as possible up north to get ready for the TA. When it comes to transportation in NZ, there are essentially 4 options: use public transportation, hitchhike, purchase a vehicle, or cycle. The public transport network in New Zealand is seriously lacking. It wouldn’t realistically allow me to access much of the hiking I was hoping to do; public transportation was out. I dislike hitchhiking for a variety of reasons; this was also out. Purchasing a vehicle made no real financial sense. Especially considering I was going to need to sell it again in 3 months time; I couldn’t purchase a vehicle. This left one option: cycle. I purchased a $300 bike, a set of panniers, and headed off towards the North Island. Side note, I’m fairly certain the panniers were more expensive than the bike itself. They were also totally awesome; at the end of the trip, I ended up keeping the panniers and donating the bike.
When outfitting my bikepacking setup, I made some bizarre gear decisions. Including, leaving behind my air mat in favour of a CCF mat. And neglecting to take a stove; I thought I should should have a dry run with cold soaking before I did it on the TA. I don’t know what I was thinking leaving behind a stove; two months of cold soaked couscous during the tail end of winter fucking sucked.
Nelson to Wellington
I cowboy camped once in New Zealand. I did it when I was cycling from Nelson to Picton to catch the ferry to the North Island. I quickly learned that the flightless birds love messing with you as you sleep and the condensation is absolutely absurd.
Wellington to Masterton
Whenever I mention that I hitchhike, friends usually ask me the same question “have you ever had anything weird happen?” I’ve never had any untoward hitches; however, I’ve had a really weird hitchhiking adjacent experience.
When I was tramping in Tararua Range just north of Wellington, I ran into another tramper in a hut. After talking for a bit and explaining where I’d come from and where I was going, he realized he lived on my intended cycle route and thus offered me a place to stay. Brilliant! Anyways, we walk out together from the hut to the carpark where he’s offered to give me a ride back to his place. The walk out takes us about three hours and we talk about a variety stuff the entire time; we’re both keen cyclists and trampers so there’s a lot to discuss. He’d also done the South Island of the TA the prior year, so I picked his brain a bit about this. As we start the drive back to his place, he begins to talk about a series of coincidences that have occurred in his life. For example, he was climbing on Mt. Cook in the 90s and lost his rope on a glacier; subsequently, he was a picked up hitchhiking three weeks later on the North Island and his rope was in the back of the vehicle. There was also similar story with an ice axe. Odd but understandable. He then proceeded to speak in depth about his epilepsy diagnosis and this was related some other personal issues in his life. It was framed in the same context as one of the previous coincidences we’d talked about. I don’t remember all the specifics of the story; it was incredibly convoluted and difficult to follow. However, I vividly remember the end of the story where he began to talk how there was someone out there controlling his life and setting up these coincidences. Regardless, I still spent the night at his place. As we were making dinner, he explained why he’d offered to let me stay at his place. Basically, he believed us meeting was a coincidence that had been set up by this person controlling his life and he wanted to talk to me to try to figure out why it had been setup. We never figured it out and I got rolling again the following morning.
I should also say, he was an incredibly kind and generous host. There was obviously no ill intent and I never felt threatened. After speaking with a friend of mine who’s a doctor, we thought he might have been schizophrenic.
Tararua Main Range Circuit
The Tararuas are likely the most intimidating mountain range on the North Island. They’re just of north of Wellington and sit relatively close to the west coast. They’re position near the coast means they receive terrible weather that is often prone to sudden changes. I experienced some of the strongest winds of my life while tramping in the Tararuas; there were moments where I thought I was going to get lifted off my feet.
For my first trip in the Tararuas, I opted to tackle the Main Range Circuit. This connects the Kime and Mangahuka Huts via the Tararua peaks featuring a knife edge traverse and a big ass metal ladder. Typically, trampers will start at the Otaki Forks trailhead and take 4-5 days. Because I was traveling by bike, I didn’t want to take a day long detour to Otaki. So I opted to start from Kaitoke which is further south and adds a bit of distance.
Most of this tramp is spent slogging away below treeline through unbelievable amounts of mud. Like truly unbelievable amounts of mud; I’m talking kilometer after kilometer of shin deep mud. However, once you get above treeline it’s truly magical.
I did the roughly 70 km across 2.5 days. I had good weather for the entire trip. I wouldn’t risk doing the Tararua Peaks in poor weather; they’re just too exposed.
Mitre Peak to Jumbo Holdsworth Circuit
My second trip in the Tararuas was Mitre Peak to the Jumbo-Holdsworth Circuit. The Jumbo Holdsworth Circuit is a fairly popular loop; however, the addition of Mitre Peak is slightly less common and adds about 10 km of off-trail travel along a ridge. It’s completely doable in a day; however, I opted to split it over two days with a night at Mitre Flats Hut. I got started at 5 AM from Mitre Flats the following morning and promptly got lost making my way towards Mitre Peak. The bush is so dense for the most part that you need the trail; bushwhacking is just too slow for it make any real sense. After a while, I regained the trail and quickly made it up to treeline.
I took the ridge around Mitre Peak and towards the Broken Axe Pinnacles. However, I opted to bail off the ridge down to the valley as weather was rolling in. Nothing ever materialized; however, it felt a little too exposed for my liking. I would love to go back at some point and finish this off.
I also snapped my single tent pole during this tramp.
Masterton to Whanganui
The route I was taking up the North Island was roughly equivalent to what I would later be following while hiking the TA. So, I was careful to go see a few different things that I wouldn’t have the chance to while on the TA. One of these things was the Ruahinis. They’re a mountain range on the south central North Island; the closest major towns are Palmerston North and Taupo.
I was initially planning to complete a loop on the tops. However, when I got there, I was greeted by a late snow storm. After bailing from the tops, I spent most of the day at a hut hanging with two groups of hunters. The first group was a family: Rob, his son and his son’s friend. Rob was an environmental consultant from Taupo and they’d come out for few days of deer stalking during school holidays. The second group was running an introductory course on hunting. The group had two experienced hunters as trip leaders and there were about a dozen first time hunters in the group.
Tongariro National Park
I spent a night at the Whanganaui hostel then made my way to Tongariro National Park to meet up with my friend Anne-Lise, who was one of my roommates during the past winter.
Northern Circuit and Around the Mountain
This was my first longer hike up north and also where I learned my shoes were about a size too small.
National Park to Taupo
Thank you to Rob and family for hosting me!
Taupo to Tauranga
This was the heavy tourist phase of my North Island bike tour. In roughly a week, I connected three tourist hotspots: Taupo, Rotorua, and Tauranga. Conveniently, all three have well developed cycle routes that connect them. Tauranga was probably my favourite of the three; I really like the coast.
Tauranga to Thames
The first part of this ride towards Matamata was probably the worst section of road I dealt with during my entire time in NZ. You’re on SH29 which is an incredibly busy road with practically no shoulder. In hindsight, I either should have ridden this really late at night or hitched.
The Kaimai Ridgeway
The reward for surviving the ride out of Tauranga is the Kaimai Ridgeway. The Kaimai Range is about 30 km west of Tauranga and you can traverse the length of it from the north to the south. The complete is about 100 km and I was hoping to perform a yo-yo of the traverse in four days. This meant covering roughly 50 km per day. I’d read a previous trip report from a party that had done the traverse in 3 days round trip from Auckland including travel time via bus; this gave me some confidence about my planned pace.
This trip was to serve as the final shake out hike before I started the Te Araroa. This meant carrying all the same gear, the same food, and finally cutting my full length CCF mat down to a torso length pad. For some reason, cutting my sleeping pad felt like the biggest milestone.
The Kaimai Ridgeway is pretty incredible. It’s dense rainforest with surprisingly good trails for the most part – at least by NZ standards. There’s even a boardwalk section above treeline.
My planning for this trip was unsurprisingly pretty minimal; I basically bought roughly the right amount of food and got going. It didn’t occur to me to check for trail closures; as it turned out, about 15 km of my planned route was closed for Kauri dieback. This meant I had to take the old N-S route instead which was essentially shin deep mud for 15 km. This slowed me down heavily and I wasn’t quite able to do a yo-yo of the entire traverse; I had to stop about 10 km short. Still it was a fruitful trip where I learned a lot and got to explore an incredibly special place. I feel
The Ridgeway also yielded one of my funnier encounters in the bush. On my final night, I stopped at a tiny two bunk hut, only to find that there was already someone there. I was actually really excited to speak with him; I hadn’t seen anyone in the previous three days. Anyhow, he quickly went on to tell me how he’d gotten lost and had to call the police; it turned out that he had absolutely no map. That is to say, no paper map, no digital map, absolutely nothing. I should note, he had a working smartphone and practically the entire Ridgeway has service; yet somehow, he hadn’t managed to download a map. His sole navigational aid was a print out with turn by turn directions for the N-S traverse; the directions were primarily cued off named streams where you needed to have a map to know the names of the streams. I was slightly flabbergasted and ended up giving him my paper map.
The Coromandel
The Coromandel was meant to serve as a sort of vacation before starting the TA. Although, I realize it sounds a bit out of touch calling it a vacation when in reality this entire trip was technically vacation. Anyways, my plan was to spend roughly 5 days hanging out and cycling around the Coromandel. I ended up spending 3 days pulling into a headwind the entire time while it poured rain. I pretty quickly said “fuck it” to the Coromandel and made my way to Auckland so I could start the TA.
