A Dangerous Business

Date: 16th December 2023

Start: Whakapapa Holiday Park (km 1143)

End: YHA National Park (km 1162.7)

Distance Travelled: 19.7 km

Total Distance Completed: 1089.7 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: Brisbane Harbour by The Dreadnoughts

Peer Pressure Resistance: negligible

Help. I’ve had so many early starts these last few days that my body is getting used to them and I’m waking up naturally before my (already early) alarm goes off. And this is in a day when I don’t need to rush. It’s a fairly short hop skip and jump to National Park, although there are a few hurdles to cross first. The first of these involves food: a breakfast buffet back at the Skotel where we had dinner the previous night.

And it was good. Very good. Some might say too good, because we stayed for close to 2 hours and left feeling a bit uncomfortable after all the food we had eaten. Several rounds of pastries, toast, bacon, poached eggs, coffee and juice.

But I didn’t come to New Zealand to eat lots of breakfast food (maybe at a later date), I came to walk the length of the country, although only a small portion of it today. Leaving the hotel with Maud and Anne, we travelled back to the holiday park and began our walk through to National Park. For the first little while we had a lovely track to our hands; this one had actually been maintained.

It still was washed out in a handful of places, so we had to work for our kilometres, Ruapehu looking down at us judging every step we took.

This first section is part of the Round the Mountain Circuit. As the name suggests, it’s a circuit that goes round a mountain. Ruapehu to be exact, and it’s often used as an alternative to going over Tongariro especially with those who have done the crossing before. After 7 km it branches off and heads south towards Whakapapaiti Hut whilst we continue east, with the track getting rougher as it traverses a semi-boggy wetland.

Melly and Matt had caught up with me by this point and we stopped several times throughout today’s walk for various photoshoots either of the mountains and surrounding environment, or of each other. Now heading north, the track was getting rougher, darting in and out of moss-covered forests and navigating a fair share of steep drops nearly as tall as me. It wasn’t all doom and gloom, there were still some sections of nice track to break up the tough bits that included yet another small but deep river crossing. The mountains were slowly diminishing in size behind us. By tomorrow they’d be completely out of visual range, and a sorrowful feeling came over me at that thought.

That’s the nature of the trail, there’s rarely time to stop and savour certain sections of it. You’ve gotta keep walking, knowing that more cool spots lay ahead of you. Some of these spots may contain flowers.

The final couple of km’s to Mangahuia campsite was a breeze, the three of us finding some “comfortable” rocks to sit on and have lunch, still resorting to plain wraps; I made a big mental note to get some sort of spread in National Park to cover me for the two days to the Whanganui.

State Highway 47 then awaited us for the last 6.5 km to town. I would’ve loved to have hitched that, but there were a few things that prevented me from doing so. Firstly, it’s a very fast highway, most people doing at least 100 km/h with no chance of stopping in time to pick up hitchhikers. Secondly, I was with Melly. Melly is a member of the EFI club. Anytime I mentioned a desire to hitch, I would be met with a look of disdain and disgust. How dare I even think about taking a ride in a stinky, stinky car.

Long story short I walked the whole road section.

Helped along by some sick beats in my ears I made short work of the road, passing Anne in the process but seemingly being unable to catch Matt and Melly and their camera gear. How on earth can you walk that fast while carrying that much glass?

Camp tonight was in a dorm room in the YHA. Once settled in I walked to the Four Square for some groceries. The final price… didn’t feel amazing. Matt and Melly had the idea of doing a communal dinner for our entire group that also included Vicki, Snacks, Anne, and Maud. I was happy to cook up some spag bol, so along with a 2 day resupply (that was 95% snacks) I had to get all the ingredients for that. No matter, it’ll be fun cooking together as a group.

Or so I thought. In the end, only myself and Team Camera made dishes; spag bol from me, a salad from Melly, and tempura veges from Matt. The rest decided to eat their own food. I had made enough pasta for 4 full servings and with all the other dishes only half of it got eaten. That isn’t to say it wasn’t delicious – it was – but I hated the idea of wasting that much food. I put the rest aside for my breakfast tomorrow and got into the equally delicious tempura and 2 litres of semi-melted hokey pokey ice cream that Matt had also bought. It was the textbook definition of hiker hunger. A shame that only three of us partook in the dinner, but what a feast it was.

With Tongariro done and dusted, thoughts now turned to the river and the 5 day canoe ahead of me. It’ll be a nice rest for my feet but I foresee it being quite the challenge. I’ve done a tiny bit of canoeing with my grandfather in Australia, all on quiet slow flowing streams. The Whanganui isn’t crazy fast, but the fact that it has rapids at all is a bit daunting. I’ll probably be taking a swim at least once on the trip, hopefully without the loss of anything important. If all goes well, I’ll end up in Whanganui on the 23rd.