The first couple kilometers from Apple camp are on a a gravel road and not to eventful. At one point I realized that I lost my sunglasses and had to hike back about a kilometer to get them, so that just made today 26 km instead of 24.
There’s a shoe cleaning station where the road turns into a trail. I’m not sure about the details, but somehow people are tracking in a kauri (which are gigantic ancient trees) disease, so before entering or exiting the forest you’re supposed to clean your shoes. This section of forest was actually closed not that long ago for this reason and I’m happy to have to opportunity to travel through it.
The trail descends to a river where the trail “follows the river”. I did not realize that meant the river IS the trail! I have to say that after being ankle deep in mud for the past two days it was kind of a nice change to be knee deep in a nice clean river, even if it was a bit cold.
The river merges with a bigger river at which point the trail crosses and then follows the other river upstream, this time on an actual path. I can’t say I really thought redlining in NH would be good preparation for the TA, but this trail was rough, tons of ups and downs along the river, it was narrow and slippery and there were a ton of obstacles, it was a lot of fun!
The trail then crosses the river and heads up quickly into a couple Kauri forests, which were absolutely amazing. Kauri can live to be very old and these were younger than some of the others I saw on my last trip, but they are still fantastic, some of the ones I saw were 5 or 6 feet wide at the base.
The last couple km before camp was just a road walk, it wasn’t an easy hiking day, but it’s exactly the kind of thing I wanted to see here in NZ! 197 km down!
PB and jerky? Ew lol, I think you were just that hungry!!!
redlining in the whites prepares you for EVERYTHING!