Preparing for our first Trek

So here we are, in New Zealand, working on one of the most vicious jetlag I've had the pleasure to experience. We now have to plan our first trek.

New Zealand has a system called the Great Walks, which is kind of similar to the GR system in France in that it regroups a couple of 3 to 6 days hikes and sort of formalises the way to go on about them. The system is super well done, you have a website telling you what they are, where they start, the distances between the shelters, how to get there etc etc. A couple of months ago, we decided that we would do 2 of the great walks, 1 on the North Island and one on the South. The Tongariro Northern Circuit and the Abel Tasman Coast Track.

The Tongariro Northern Circuit is a 50km circuit around active Volcanoes in the center of the North Island (I'll get into more details in a later article). There are different options to do the circuit in that there are 3 huts on the circuit and one of them can be skipped as 2 of them are "only" 9kms apart. Since it was our first trek we decided to play it safe and book the 3 huts.

The rest of the planning is pretty straight forward, We have to take care of the following: Sleeping, Eating, Drinking, Surviving.

Sleeping:

This is a fairly easy one considering we are sleeping in huts. Sleeping bags and cotton liner for heat and comfort. We initially considered bringing a set of pyjamas for comfort but this added to the weight of the bags so we left it out. Since we will be sleeping in a common dorm, earplugs are an absolute must as well as a head torch so we can go pee during the night. We also bought a pair of roll up pillows that you can fluff up with some clothes on the inside. They turned out really comfy (to be perfectly fair, we were so tired at the end of each day that we could have probably slept on stone).

Eating:

We packed our gas stove and all but in the end the huts all had gas supply so we didn't need it. For our next Walk we will be needing it though.

Breakfast: We went simple, powder cappucino and power bars/cereal bars. In hindsight that may not have been the most efficient weightwise. The cappucino was pretty gross too.

Lunch: I initially wanted to get filling lunches, maybe even considering cooking for lunch too but realised that it was going to take ages and wasn't necessary. So we decided we would take Tuna Sachets and crackers. It turned out to be pretty great and filling and we wished we had had more crackers.

Diner: Dehydrated food. It's gross, it will ruin your digestive tract but it's lightweight, filling and easy to cook. We took some of those from Back Country Cuisine (Spaghetti bolognaise, Carbonara) and from The Outdoor Gourmet Company (Boeuf Bourguignon and Coq au Vin). They taste pretty similar, I'm not sure how they do their thing but it just ends up tasting super strongly like thyme.

Snacks:

We clearly underpacked for that, we got some mixed nuts and some dried apricots which were great but really not enough.

Drinking:

Nothing crazy here. Water. We have each a 2L water pouch in our backpack plus we took 2 x 1L metallic bottles as contingency. The idea was also that if we needed to filter some water from a stream one of the bottle could be used as a buffer for untreated water. All the huts had plentiful water supply and it was rain water too so there was essentially no TSS in the Water. The only thing was that it was untreated so it only needed a quick disinfection. We had bought Chlorine tabs from the outdoor shop before leaving so that took care of that. The taste is a bit swimming-pooley but we didn't face any issue.

We also brought some Tea with us for a gentle pick-me-up at the end of the day but didn't take enough which was a bit frustrating.

Surviving:

This walk wasn't exactly a struggle for survival as this is a fairly busy track and you're never really far away from civilisation but still this is a mountainous environment where the wind can be really cold and the weather can change quite rapidly. We really overpacked with clothes for this first trek which I believe is a mistake every first timer makes. Bottom line, the minimum you really need is a layer+1 for every part of your body.

Pants/spandex, T shirt/Sweater/Soft Shell/Hard shell (windbreaker raincoat), Gloves, hat, scarf. Everything else is luxury. We obviously also carried around the basic survival kits with first aid pouches, sanitisers, and a multitool/pocket knife.

That's pretty much all there is to it. We also took with us stuff like cameras, kindles, shoes, walking sticks but those can be thought of as either obvious or personal preferences.

In the next post we tell you about the actual trek, stay tuned !