So for all of those who are interested I will be keeping a blog of my New Zealand travels this winter/summer.
Even though I have known for most of the year that I was going to be in New Zealand(NZ) this winter It didn’t feel real until 2 weeks ago when I purchased my plane ticket.
I had initially planned to hike Te Araroa(TA) in 2015-2016, but when those plans quickly devolved I started considering other trail. I needed my next fix, but the bottom line was that TA was the trail I wanted to hike.
Once I made the decision I started working towards making this hike a reality. I was a good position financially in that I have very few expenses and was able to put part of each check towards this trip. In addition to saving money on each check I will receive a bonus from work at the end of November that will be a large portion of my spending money while in NZ. I also begin to acquire and use any gear that I planned to use on my thru hike. Aside from a couple of trips to test gear I did very little backpacking. Part of the way I prepared for a three month backing trip was to do everything I could except backpacking.
Over the next couple weeks I will delve more into the the specifics of my preparations. I’ll discuss how the preparations differed from the preparations for my PCT hike. And tell the stories of some of the trips I did to “prepare” for my upcoming adventure.
Dustdevil 